616
10, MAY 15, 2020
Dual-Core Twisted Photonic Crystal Fiber Salinity
Sensor: A Numerical Investigation
K. C. Ramya, Yashar E. Monfared , Member, IEEE, R. Maheswar , and Vigneswaran Dhasarathan
Abstract— The amount of salt dissolved in a body of water
is an important factor in determining physical characteristics
like the heat capacity of the water. Here, we report a theoretical
and numerical investigation on a seawater salinity sensor using
a miniaturized fiber-optic probe based on a dual-core photonic
crystal fiber (PCF). The sensing mechanism is based on interplay
between fiber fundamental mode in the central core and a
secondary mode in the water-filled hole of the PCF. Using finite
element method analysis with Comsol Multiphysics Software,
we show that a spectral sensitivity larger than 5500 nm/RIU
can be achieved while varying the salt concentration from 0%
to 100%. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the sensitivity for
highly saline water bodies can be further improved by applying
the permanent twist on the cladding air holes of the fiber.
We studied the role of the twist directions and twist rates on the
performance of the sensor including sensitivity and the absolute
loss value. While the twist does not have any major impact on
sensitivity of the sensor for low salinities, our results indicate
that twisted PCF has an average higher sensitivity for salt
concentrations over 50% and a maximum sensitivity of nearly
7000 nm/RIU is reported around salt concentration of 80%.
Index Terms— Salinity sensor, photonic crystal fiber, twisted
fiber, refractive index sensor, dual-core fiber.
I. I NTRODUCTION
S ALINITY is one of the most important parameters in
oceanography as it reflects the state of the marine envi-
ronment [1]. Even though seawater in the world’s oceans
has an average salinity of 3.5%, seawater is not uniformly
saline throughout the world and has a variation between
almost 0% and 43% [2]. Some researchers make use of even
more saline waters in different applications like mining and
Manuscript received April 7, 2020; accepted April 9, 2020. Date of
publication April 14, 2020; date of current version April 27, 2020.
(Corresponding author: Vigneswaran Dhasarathan.)
K. C. Ramya is with the Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineer-
ing, Sri Krishna College of Engineering and Technology, Coimbatore 641008,
India.
Yashar E. Monfared was with the Physics and Atmospheric Science
Department, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS B3H 4R2, Canada. He is now
with the Chemistry Department, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS B3H 4R2,
Canada (e-mail: y.monfared@dal.ca).
R. Maheswar is with the School of EEE, VIT Bhopal University, Bhopal
466114, India.
Vigneswaran Dhasarathan is with the Division of Computational Physics,
Institute for Computational Science, Ton Duc Thang University, Ho Chi Minh
700000, Vietnam, and also with the Faculty of Electrical and Electronics
Engineering, Ton Duc Thang University, Ho Chi Minh 700000, Vietnam
(e-mail: vigneswaran.d@tdtu.edu.vn).
This article has supplementary downloadable material available at
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org, provided by the author.
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this letter are available
online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/LPT.2020.2987949
1041-1135 © 2020 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See https://www.ieee.org/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
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IEEE PHOTONICS TECHNOLOGY LETTERS, VOL. 32, NO.
thermo-electric power by increasing the seawater salt levels
to higher values [2], [3]. Therefore, a reliable and accurate
measurement of water salinity plays a crucial role in industrial
research and environmental monitoring applications includ-
ing controlling the aquaculture, reduce the hazards for the
coastal communities and management of the marine resources
[1]–[3]. Electronic-based conventional salinity sensors collect
the information by probing the electrical conductivity of the
seawater [4]. The commercially available electronic-based
salinity sensors are usually a part of the CTD (conductivity,
temperature, depth) devices. However, there are a few substan-
tial problems associated with the use of CTD as salinity sensor.
The most important problems are the complicated structure
of CTD due to sensitivity to water velocity, difficulties for
miniaturization, low sensitivity to salinity and also zero sen-
sitivity to non-conductive part of dissolved substances in the
seawater which renders CTD as a not ideal candidate to track
the changes in seawater salinity [3], [4].
In the past few years and with the advances in fiber-optic
technology, optical fiber salinity sensors have been received
special attentions in both academia and industry as an attrac-
tive alternative to CTD devices. As optical fiber-based refrac-
tive index (RI) sensors are already taken into practice, salinity
information can be obtained by measuring the RI of the sea-
water [4], [5]. Currently, optical fiber salinity sensors include
the conventional grating interferometers, microfiber ring res-
onators, fiber-based Fabry-Perot cavities, side-polished fibers,
tapered fibers and photonic crystal fibers (PCFs) [4]–[6].
Between all of these candidates, PCFs can offer highly
sensitive fiber-based sensors, interesting optical properties and
a simple fabrication process which make them one of the most
promising candidates to replace CTDs [7]. PCFs are usually
consist of a core (like a regular optical fiber) and an array of
micro-structured air holes which can perform as the cladding
with an effective refractive index (as opposed to regular optical
fibers) [7], [8]. The air holes formation and the size of airholes
can offer a great deal of flexibility in terms of the design of
the optical fibers and manage the optical properties which is
highly desired in sensor design [8].
Recently, a new class of PCFs with twisted core/holes
have been studied theoretically and experimentally [9], [10].
In particular, helically twisted PCFs exhibit several unusual
properties related to their helical symmetry which provides
even more opportunities for light manipulation. The idea of
twisting fiber structures is fundamentally interesting because
it enables creating modes with an orbital angular momentum
(OAM) and controlling the state of polarization and the fiber’s
optical activity [9], [10]. For example, the single mode prop-
agation can be maintained for high normalized frequencies
 RAMYA et al.: DUAL-CORE TWISTED PHOTONIC CRYSTAL FIBER SALINITY SENSOR
Fig. 1. Cross section of the proposed twisted PCF with different design
parameters holes pitch (), air holes diameter (d), larger holes diameter (d1 )
and seawater hole diameter (d2 ).
due to increased attenuation of higher-order modes related
to core curvature [9], [10]. There are two main experimental
techniques to fabricate twisted PCFs: by laser induced post-
process or by twisting the preform in the drawing tower during
fabrication [10], [11]. Helically twisted PCFs fabricated and
experimentally studied as sensors, circular polarizers, couplers,
?lters and dispersion controllers [9]–[11]. In this letter, we first
focus on the design of our salinity sensor using a twisted PCF
and explain how we model light propagation in our proposed
sensor. We then analyze the sensing performance of the twisted
PCF as a salinity sensor. We demonstrate that twisted PCFs
can be used to detect seawater salinity as well as a wide range
of analytes with similar RI.
II. D ESIGN OF S ALINITY S ENSOR
A. Sensor Design
As mentioned in the introduction, our proposed sensor is
based on a twisted PCF. In Fig. 1, the cross-section of our
proposed sensor and the corresponding design parameters are
clearly illustrated. The design parameters for our sensor are
holes pitch (), air holes diameter (d and d1 ) and seawater
hole diameter (d2 ) while silica is the background material.
According to the relation of Lorentz-Lorenz, RI of a mate-
rial is correlated with the density and as a result, with the
absolute salinity [4]–[6]. Therefore, by measuring the seawater
RI, we are able to find the corresponding seawater salinity.
The RI of seawater is a function of water temperature, water
salinity and excitation wavelength (laser source wavelength).
According to the previous studies, the rate of RI variation with
salinity is approximately 2 × 10−4 refractive index unit (RIU)
per 1 percent salinity at a constant temperature and the seawa-
ter RI decreases with the temperature under constant salinity
the rate of approximately 1 × 10−4 RIU per 1◦ C at around
20◦ C [4]–[6]. To understand the full picture, the relationship
between seawater salinity, ambient temperature of seawater
and the seawater refractive index can be expressed as [7],
 
S, T, λ p
 
= 1.3140+ 1.779×10−4 −1.05×10−6 T +1.6×10−8 T 2 S
15.868 + 0.01155S − 0.00423T
− 2.02 × 10−6 T 2 +
λp
−6
4382 1.1455 × 10
− 2 +
λp λ3p
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617
Fig. 2. The linear relationship between seawater salinity and seawater RI at
25 ◦ C temperature and 1000 nm excitation wavelength.
where, S is the salinity (%), and T is the temperature (◦ C) of
the seawater. In Fig. 2, we illustrate the relationship between
seawater RI and seawater salinity at a fixed temperature
(25 ◦ c) and wavelength (1000 nm). From Fig. 2, it is clear
that seawater RI increases linearly by increasing the salt
concentration in the seawater.
B. Methods
To accurately simulate the guiding mode and analyze the
performance of the sensor, material dispersion of silica (as the
background material) is taken into account using the following
sellmeier’s formula [8],
0.6961663λ2 0.4079426λ2
n 2silica = 1 + +
λ2 − 0.06840432 λ2 − 0.11624142
0.8974794λ 2
+ 2 (2)
λ − 9.8961612
where λ is the excitation wavelength in μm. We used a finite
element method (FEM) applied with Comsol Multiphysics
software to find the effective mode indices of the core and
liquid modes and then used anisotropy matrix to calculate
the effect of the fiber twists during mode propagation. The
anisotropy matrix for the cladding twist is given by [10]
⎡ 2 2 ⎤
  (α x + 1) α2 x y αy
T −1 = ⎣ α 2 x y (α 2 y 2 + 1) 0 ⎦ (3)
−αy αx 1
where x and y are for cartesian coordinate variables, α = 2π/L
is the twist rate in rad/mm and L is the twisted period. After
applying twist in cladding airholes of the fiber, the helical
axis of a twisted PCF causes the generation of left-handed
and right-handed rotationally circular polarized modes which
results in the circular mode birefringence along the propa-
gation path. We plot the corresponding modes (core modes,
liquid mods and coupled modes) for the case of right-handed
and left-handed polarizations in Fig. 3.
C. Interaction Between Core and Seawater Modes
The main sensing mechanism in our proposed salinity
sensor is the interaction between fundamental guided mode
of PCF and liquid mode (seawater mode). These two guiding
modes in our proposed PCF propagate separately with a unique
propagation constant and effective mode index (neff ). When
(1)
the real part of the effective mode indices of these two
 618
Fig. 3. Mode profile of the twisted PCF with d = 1.4μm, d1 = 2.2μm,
d2 = 0.6 μm and  = 2μm and circular polarization excitation for (a) core
mode- left rotation, (b) core mode – right rotation, (c) liquid mode – left
rotation, (d) liquid mode – right rotation (e) coupled mode left-rotation and
(f) coupled mode right-rotation.
Fig. 4. Interactions between core and liquid modes and corresponding CL
spectra for a RR-PCF. Insets show electrical field distribution of the (a) liquid
mode, (b) fiber fundamental core mode, and (c) coupled mode at resonance.
modes become equal to each other (neff−Core = neff−Liquid )
the interaction between these two guiding modes enhances
significantly and loss maxima appears in the corresponding
spectra. This loss is called confinement loss (CL) which related
to imaginary part of neff and can be calculated through the
following formula [8],
8.686 × 2π × I m(n e f f ) × 107
CL(dB/cm) = , (4)
λ
where λ is the excitation wavelength in nm.
In Fig 4, we demonstrate the interactions between core
and liquid modes and corresponding CL spectra when the
PCF experience a twist with right-rotation circularly polarized
excitation (RR-PCF). The liquid mode (Fig. 4a), core mode
(Fig. 4b) and the coupled mode at resonance wavelength
(Fig. 4c) are visualized where salt concentration is 20%, and
d = 1.4μm, d1 = 2.2μm, d2 = 0.6 μm and  = 2μm.
Note that the design parameters are optimized after significant
amount of trial and error with numerical simulations to achieve
the highest possible coupling between the modes. As seen
in Fig. 3, the real part of effective mode index of core mode
and liquid mode matches at 1300 nm and a maximum appears
in imaginary part of the effective mode index of the core
mode which corresponds to a peak in CL spectra. The similar
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IEEE PHOTONICS TECHNOLOGY LETTERS, VOL. 32, NO. 10, MAY 15, 2020
Fig. 5. Interactions between core and liquid modes and corresponding CL
spectra for a LR-PCF. Insets show electrical field distribution of the (a) liquid
mode, (b) fiber fundamental mode, and (c) coupled mode at resonance.
Fig. 6. (a) variations of resonance wavelength for untwisted and twisted PCF
with different twist rates as a function of salt concentration and (b) average
confinement loss of untwisted and twisted PCF sensors with different twist
rates for salt concentrations between 0 and 100%.
story happens in the case of twisted PCF with left-rotation
circularly polarized excitation (LR-PCF). As seen in Fig. 5,
real part of the neff of the core mode matches neff of the
liquid mode, a peak appears in the spectra of the imaginary
part of the effective index of the core guided mode which
corresponds to a CL peak. This peak maximum which can
be called the peak wavelength appears around 1150 nm for
a left-hand twisted PCF with salt concentration of 20%, and
d = 1.4μm, d1 = 2.2μm, d2 = 0.6μm and  = 2μm. From
Figs 4 and 5, we can see that the coupling is much stronger
and red shifted for the case of RR-PCF (almost one order of
magnitude larger) which clearly suggest that the RR-PCF is a
better choice for salinity sensing in our case.
III. S ENSING P ERFORMANCE
As we demonstrate in the previous section, by measuring
the transmission or loss spectra of the fiber and locating the
CL peak wavelength, we can easily find the corresponding
salt concentration in the seawater. The possible measurement
setup of the sensor and different ways of infiltrating seawater
are discussed in Supplementary Material (Fig. S1). Here we
analyze the performance of our proposed salinity sensor under
different conditions. We first start with a case when PCF does
not have any twist (regular PCF sensor or untwisted PCF)
and calculate the resonance wavelength (λresonance ) or peak
loss wavelength as a function of salt concentration between
0 and 100% (Fig. S2). As seen in Fig. 6a and Fig. S2,
the loss spectra maxima blueshifts from 1133nm to 1040nm
by varying the salt concentration from 0% to 100%. In order
 RAMYA et al.: DUAL-CORE TWISTED PHOTONIC CRYSTAL FIBER SALINITY SENSOR
Fig. 7. Comparison between sensor spectral sensitivities of twisted-PCF and
untwisted-PCF for detecting the salt concentration in seawater.
to see the effect of twist on the performance of the sensor,
we examined three different twist rates (5 rad/mm, 7.5 rad/mm
and 10 rad/mm) for both RR-PCF and LR-PCF, and calculated
the loss spectra for different salt concentration in the seawater
(Fig. S3 and Fig. S4). RR-PCF has superior performance to
LR-PCF in terms of actual amount of CL, sensitivity and
linearity. We compared the resonance peak shift and actual
amount of loss of RR-PCF with different twist rates with
untwisted PCF in Fig. 6a and 6b. While the shift between
peaks remain almost linear for untwisted PCF, the twisted
PCF show larger peak shift close to 80% salt concentration.
The peak shift is stronger in the case of larger twist rates
(10 rad/mm compared to 5 rad/mm). It is also clear that
twisted PCFs have an overall higher CL compared to untwisted
PCF (Fig. 6b).
Finally, according to the loss spectra we obtained for
different cases, we studied the sensitivity of the proposed
salinity sensor. Spectral sensitivity can be defined as the
ratio between variations in peak wavelength and RI of the
seawater as [7], [8],
Spectral Sensitivity (nm/RIU)
Peak loss vari ati ons (nm)
= ,
V ari ati on i n R I o f seawater
To show the role of the twist in improving the sensitivity of the
sensor, we demonstrate the spectral sensitivity of our proposed
salinity sensor and compared the performance of the sensor for
untwisted-PCF and twisted-PCF (RR-PCF) with three different
twist rates in Fig. 7. As seen in Fig. 7, there is no significant
difference between sensitivities of the twisted and untwisted
PCF for salinities less than 50% (nearly 5500 nm/RIU).
It means twist does not have a major role in improving the
sensitivity of the sensor where salt concentrations are lower
than 50%.
However, the sensitivity of twisted-PCF increases dramati-
cally with salt concentration for RR-PCF as we go over 50%
in salt concentration (larger than 6500 nm/RIU for seawater
salinities around 80%) which is by far higher than untwisted
PCF case. The large spike in sensitivity close to 80% salt
concentration (almost 7000 nm/RIU for 10 rad/mm twist rate)
is due to maximum coupling between core mode and liquid
mode at this concentration. Depending on the application,
the maximum sensitivity can be tuned to different salt con-
centrations by changing the design parameters of the PCF.
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619
We plan to investigate the tunability of twisted PCF sensors
in future manuscripts. The results in Fig. 7 suggest that higher
twist rates can improve the sensitivity of the sensor in this
region.
IV. C ONCLUSION
This work describes the use of a dual-core photonic crystal
fiber (PCF) infiltrated with seawater samples in hollow channel
of cladding region as a salinity sensor. The sensing mechanism
which is based on mode coupling between the two cores
(liquid core and fiber central core) are described in detail.
We also studied the effect of fiber twist on the performance
of the proposed sensor. The results indicate that a maximum
sensitivity of almost 7000 nm/RIU for twisted PCF and
5500 nm/RIU for untwisted PCF can be achieved. While the
permanent twist does not have a major impact on the sensitiv-
ity of the sensor for salt concentrations lower than 50%, it is
demonstrated that it can significantly improve the sensitivity of
the sensor in applications where salt concentration is higher
than 55% in a body of water. In addition to seawater salt,
the proposed sensor can be used to detect a wide range of
analytes with similar RI.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors would like to thank Prof. Dr. Truong Khang
Nguyen, Division of Computational Physics, Institute for
Computational Science, Ton Duc Thang University, Ho Chi
Minh City, Vietnam for his support and assistance with this
project and constructive comments.
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