a fiber optic microbend sensor with a braided arrangement of multiple optical fibers 16 such that the length dependent microbending losses result from the interaction of the fibers 10 themselves without the need for additional external structures such as corrugated plates 12 , 14 . a plurality of fibers with at least one of the fibers being an optical fiber 10 are braided together into an interwoven strand 16 to produce the fiber optic microbend sensor . the spatial bend frequency of the braid 16 corresponds to the optimum microbend frequency for the fiber 10 .