The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Oct. 14, 1997
Filed:
Nov. 06, 1996
Ian Grainge Clarke, Sydney, AU;
The University of Sydney, Sydney, AU;
Abstract
A current sensor which makes use of the Faraday effect, which is patterned on a Sagnac interferometer and which employs a coil of spun birefringent optical fibre for sensing the magnitude of current flowing through a conductor about which the sensor is, in use, located. The sensor in its preferred form comprises a coil (1) of spun single mode birefringent optical fibre (11), the coil being arranged to locate about a conductor (12) through which current flow occurs. A beam splitting device (22) in the form of a 3*3 coupler is coupled with the ends of the coil fibre and is arranged to launch counter-propagating light beams into the respective ends of the coil fibre. A lasing light source (16) is optically coupled to the beam splitting device by way of a 2*2 coupler (21), and detectors (18) which are arranged to detect a phase shift between the polarisation modes of the counter-propagated light beams are optically coupled to the ends of the coil fibre by way of the beam splitting device.