Angular characteristics of a multimode fibre surface plasmon resonance sensor under wavelength interrogation

In this paper the angular characteristics of a multimode fibre SPR sensor are theoretically investigated. By separating the contributions of beams incident at different angles, a compact model is presented to predict the shift of the resonance wavelength with respect to the angle and the environmental refractive index. The result suggests that the performance of conventional fibre SPR sensors can be substantially improved by optimizing the incident angle. Furthermore, our investigation suggests some problems in previous reports. (paper)