Development of a 32-element fibre optic hydrophone system

The structure and performance of an all polarization maintaining optical fibre hydrophone element is described and a sensitivity of -158+/-1.5dB is achieved. A 32-element, spatially multiplexed system is constructed with a noise-equivalent sound pressure of similar to3.58 X 10(-4) Pa/rootHz at 1kHz and the major results of sea trials indicate that the system is useful for research and industrial applications