Finite element modelling of an optical antenna using piezoelectric polymer coated D-fibre

Abstract

It has been demonstrated that an all-fibre electric field sensor comprising a D-shaped optical fibre coated with a transversely poled piezoelectric material can be successfully modelled by using finite element analysis (FEA) techniques. The modelling was employed to compute the phase shift over the frequency range from 100 Hz to 50 MHz. This work describes, for the first time, the novel approach of using the FEA to simulate the response of a optical D-fibre antenna. One unique advantage of the optical fibre antenna is that it is all-dielectric and it is relatively transparent to the incident electric field. Therefore the optical fibre antenna will not significantly distort or scatter the incident field.