Optical Frequency Domain Reflectometry (OFDR) with the use of polarization maintaining fiber (PMF) is capable of
distinguishing strain and temperature, which is critical for successful field applications such as structural health
monitoring (SHM) and smart material. Location-dependent measurement sensitivities along PMF are compensated by
cross- and auto-correlations measurements of the spectra form a distributed parameter matrix. Simultaneous temperature
and strain measurement accuracy of 1μstrain and 0.1°C is achieved with 2.5mm spatial resolution in over 180m range.
KEYWORDS: Polarization, Spatial resolution, Sensors, Temperature metrology, Signal detection, Sensing systems, Signal to noise ratio, Rayleigh scattering, Time division multiplexing, Data acquisition
The drive for high spatial resolution (millimeters) distributed fiber sensors has renewed the interest in optical frequency domain reflectrometry (OFDR) systems. Because millimeters equivalent spatial resolution in optical time domain reflectrometry (OTDR) systems would require a data acquisition card with a bandwidth of 10 GHz and a sampling rate of tens of G Samples/s, such a digitizer or data acquisition card plus the pulse generator and detection system will make a distributed sensors very expensive, while a tunable laser with a wide tuning range can provide millimeters resolution with short sensing range (<100m). We developed a high precision temperature (0.1°C) and strain (1μ strain) resolution and 2.5mm spatial resolution over 180m range by auto and cross-correlation of OFDR in PMF. The dual modes of PMF allow the discrimination of the temperature and strain with distinct dependency. The application of this sensor for internal crack detection of concrete beam has been demonstrated. For distributed dynamic measurement, the upper frequency is limited by the repetition rate of the laser pulse in sensing fiber; in addition the weak Rayleigh scattering signal demands many averaging to improve SNR. The continuous wavelet transform approach has been introduced in phase OTDR sensor system to suppress random noise, and multiple vibration disturbances have been measured simultaneously for power generator monitoring. For the high frequency vibration detection, the coherent detection combined with polarization diversity scheme is implemented.
Optical fiber taper is proposed to be a high-sensitivity force sensor by using high-resolution, high-sensitivity optical
frequency-domain reflectometry technique. The cross-correlation wavelength shift in the uniform region of taper is
related to the refractive index change of the fundamental mode. The wavelength-force sensitivity of a fiber taper is
dramatically improved due to its reduced waist diameter. It was demonstrated that that a taper with a waist diameter of
~6μm has a force resolution of 6.35μN and a force sensitivity of 620.83nm/N, which is about 500 times higher than that
of SMF, over its uniform taper range with a spatial resolution of 3.85mm.
A high-spatial-resolution distributed optical fiber vibration sensor is demonstrated. The distributed dynamic strain or
vibration information can be obtained using time-resolved optical frequency-domain reflectometry (OFDR). Time-domain
information is resolved by measuring Rayleigh backscatter spectrum in different wavelength ranges which fall in
successive time sequence due to the linear wavelength sweep of the tunable laser source with a constant sweeping rate.
This time-resolved local Rayleigh backscatter spectrum shift of the vibrated state with respect to that of the non-vibrated
state along the fiber length provides dynamic strain information in a distributed manner. The measurable frequency range
of 0-32 Hz with the spatial resolution of 10 cm can be achieved
KEYWORDS: Spatial resolution, Signal to noise ratio, Sensors, Sensing systems, Distortion, Signal attenuation, Optical amplifiers, Polarization, Signal processing, Scattering
Long distance sensing based on Brillouin scattering with centimeter spatial resolution, and yet high strain or temperature
resolution requires the optimization of the optical and electronic system. In optical domain the limiting factors include
gain saturation of the Stokes signal and pump depletion induced the Brillouin spectrum distortion, and thus a low gain is
desired that requires low pump power, which sets a limit in the signal to noise ratio (SNR). The detection system must
have high gain and narrow bandwidth to reduce electronic noise. The coded pulse offers the best solution as a low power
solution of long distance sensing based on BOTDA to improve the signal to noise ratio (SNR), comparing two most
common used formats: non-return-to-zero (NRZ) and return-to-zero (RZ), RZ coded pulses offer minimum distortion in
the spatial resolution and the Brillouin spectrum, because the signal in RZ format returns to zero in very bit, while in
NRZ coded pulse the signal returns to zero after continuous "1"s, which brings the higher gain and lower bandwidth
comparing that in RZ coded pulse for BOTDA system. Hence NRZ coded pulse BOTDA would introduce spatial
broadening and lower the spatial resolution. With minimum distortion of RZ signal we can use differential Brillouin gain
to realize DPP-BOTDA technique for sub-meter spatial resolution. The minimum coded pulse width must be larger than
the acoustic wave relaxation time to avoid the distorted Brillouin gain spectrum. Using LEAF fiber we achieved 50km
sensing length and 50cm spatial resolution with the strain resolution of 8με which is equivalent to 0.7MHz Brillouin
frequency shift, this is the 1st sub-meter spatial resolution for 50km sensing length combined with high strain resolution.
We demonstrate frequency-shifted light storage in a photonics crystal fiber (PCF) via stimulated Brillouin scattering.
Because of the ultra-small core of PCF, only 20 W of peak power is used for the write and read pulses to store and
retrieve the data pulse at much lower peak power of 200 mW. A 3-nanosecond-long data pulse is stored for up to 11 ns
with a maximum readout efficiency of 11% at 7 ns storage time using main acoustic mode; a polarization-independent
frequency-shift stored pulse is realized by using the high-order acoustic modes with a shifted frequency of ~20GHz and a
readout efficiency of 6% at 6ns storage time.
KEYWORDS: Signal to noise ratio, Spatial resolution, Receivers, Signal attenuation, Data acquisition, Fiber optics, Physics, Fiber optics sensors, Scattering, Temperature metrology
The signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) enhancement using a coded pulse in Brillouin Optical Time Domain Analysis (BOTDA)
is studied theoretically and experimentally and compared with the one pulse case. This new technique is based on
simplex coding and provides a theoretical SNR enhancement of 3.6 dB. We find that the experimental SNR
improvement is around 3.8 dB, which is in good accordance with the theory. We also observe that the Differential
Pulsewidth Pair - Brillouin Optical Time Domain Analysis (DPP-BOTDA) method can be applied. This allows to
combine high spatial and frequency resolutions1 and higher SNR.
We demonstrate a 12-km differential pulse-width pair BOTDA using 40/50 ns pulses with DC-coupled detection. A
spatial resolution of 1 m and a narrowband Brillouin gain spectrum of 33 MHz are obtained simultaneously compared
with 88 MHz for 10 ns pulse. The experimental results also show that the differential Brillouin gain is improved by 6.8
times over direct Brillouin gain of 10 ns pulse, and temperature uncertainty for 40/50 ns pulses is 0.25 °C and while for
10 ns pulse is 1.8 °C.
KEYWORDS: Spatial resolution, Signal to noise ratio, Sensors, Phonons, Acoustics, Modulation, Scattering, Signal attenuation, Signal detection, Convolution
We propose a different pulse pair Brillouin optical time domain analysis (DPP-BOTDR) for centimeter or sub-centimeter
spatial resolution using meter equivalent pulses. It is based on a pair of different pulses with small pulse width difference
(much smaller than each of the pulse width). The process is analogous to the high pass filter which amplifies short stress
section and provides high spatial resolution for the distributed Brillouin sensor using the large pulses (tens of
nanoseconds) and extinction ratio of more than 30dB. This new approach achieves the centimeter spatial resolution over
fiber length of kilometers with low pump and probe power. Using a pair of 50ns and 48ns pulses we achieve the spatial
resolution of 2ns equivalent spatial resolution for two stress section of 50cm and separated by 1m fiber over 1km sensing
length. The strain resolution is equivalent to 2.6MHz Brillouin frequency shift. The spatial resolution is determined by
the convolution of the bandwidth of the detection system and pulse width difference. The signal to noise ratio of the
sensor difference is also related to the pulse width difference.
We conducted a strain characterization experiment to detect concrete beam cracks using distributed Brillouin sensor
system. An accurate Brillouin multiple-peak fitting method is used to enhance the spatial and strain resolution. This
allows us to exactly extract the distributed strain section that is smaller than the spatial resolution of the Brillouin sensor
system.
The effects of temperature on the Brillouin spectrum in novel carbon/polyimide coated fibers have been firstly studied.
We also firstly investigated the aging behavior for these fibers by comparing the changing of the relationship between
Brillouin frequency shift and temperature.
Dispersion effect in stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) slow light is studied to compensate the pulse distortion using
SBS - dispersion decreasing fiber (SBS-DDF). SBS-DDF has the feature of the dispersion increasing and effective area
decreasing, hence intensity increasing along the fiber. This increased intensity is used to balance the intensity decreasing
of the pump beam from pump and probe interaction in Brillouin medium at the Brillouin frequency and fiber attenuation.
The same principle is applied to the counter propagating Stokes wave, that decreased intensity due to the effective core
area increasing is used to eliminate Stokes beam saturation through Brillouin loss interaction. A minimum pulse
distortion with high delay of 1.8ns over 2ns pulse is achieved.
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