TY - CONF A1 - Liehr, Sascha A1 - Breithaupt, Mathias A1 - Krebber, Katerina T1 - Distributed Humidity Sensing in PMMA Polymer Optical Fibers N2 - The distributed measurement of relative humidity is a sought-after capability for a wide range of applications in civil engineering and structural health monitoring. We show that polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) optical fi-bers can be employed as a sensor medium to conduct distributed humidity measurement by analyzing Rayleigh backscattering traces obtained by OTDR. We make use of the effect that water penetrates the fiber core and directly influences the local fiber attenuation and Rayleigh backscatter coefficient. We conducted distributed backscattering analysis for two different pulse wavelengths: 500 nm and 650 nm. The 650 nm results are susceptible to both, attenuation changes and backscatter changes, whereas backscatter results at 500 nm are not affected by humidity-induced attenuation and only exhibit a change of Rayleigh backscattered power as a function of humidity. The combined measurement and analysis of both parameters at these two wavelengths has the advantage that cross-sensitivities on backscatter change and attenuation, such as strain and tempera-ture changes, could be separated from the humidity response of the fiber. We present laboratory results for a humidity range between 30% and 90% for both pulse wavelengths: including step responses, humidity cycles and hysteresis analysis. In addition to the attenuation and backscatter coefficient dependence, we also analyze optical runtime changes as a function of humidity. POFs have the advantage that they can be directly embed-ded into materials such as concrete or soil to measure water content or localize water ingress. Standard step-index PMMA POFs can be used as a distributed relative humidity sensor up to 200 m distance. T2 - The 28th International Conference on Plastic Optical Fibers CY - Yokohama, Japan DA - 20.11.2019 KW - Distributed humidity sensor KW - PMMA KW - Rayleigh scattering KW - Polymer optical fiber KW - Distributed sensor KW - Optical fiber sensor KW - OTDR PY - 2019 AN - OPUS4-49868 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -