  The analysis of surrounding media has been a long-standing challenge of
optical fiber sensors. Measurements are difficult due to the confinement of
light to the inner core of standard fibers. Over the last two years, new sensor
concepts have enabled the analysis of liquids outside the cladding boundary,
where light does not reach. Sensing is based on opto-mechanical, forward
stimulated Brillouin scattering interactions between guided light and sound
waves. In most previous works, however, the protective polymer coating of the
fiber had to be removed first. In this work, we report the opto-mechanical
analysis of liquids outside commercially available, standard single-mode fibers
with polyimide coating. The polyimide layer provides mechanical protection but
can also transmit acoustic waves from the fiber cladding towards outside media.
Comprehensive analysis of opto-mechanical coupling in coated fibers that are
immersed in liquid is provided. The model shows that forward stimulated
Brillouin scattering spectra in coated fibers are more complex than those of
bare fibers, and strongly depend on the exact coating diameter and the choice
of acoustic mode. Nevertheless, sensing outside coated fibers is demonstrated
experimentally. Integrated measurements over 100 meters of fiber clearly
distinguish between air, ethanol and water outside polyimide coating. Measured
spectra are in close quantitative agreement with the analytic predictions.
Further, distributed opto-mechanical time-domain reflectometry mapping of water
and ethanol outside coated fiber is reported, with a spatial resolution of 100
meters. The results represent a large step towards practical opto-mechanical
fiber sensors.
