Development of a 32-element fiber 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 ~3.58x10-4 Pa per square root Hz at 1kHz and the major results of sea trials indicate that the system is useful for research and industrial applications.