Analysis of a distributed fiber-optic temperature sensor using single-photon detectors

TL;DR

This paper presents a high-accuracy distributed fiber-optic temperature sensor utilizing superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors and standard telecom fiber, achieving 3 K uncertainty with 1 cm spatial resolution in 60 seconds.

Contribution

It introduces a novel temperature sensing method using single-photon detectors and standard fiber, demonstrating low-loss, high-resolution measurements with systematic uncertainty mitigation.

Findings

Temperature uncertainty of ~3 K achieved

Spatial resolution of about 1 cm demonstrated

Measurement accuracy improved with polarization diversity receiver

Abstract

We demonstrate a high-accuracy distributed fiber-optic temperature sensor using superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors and single-photon counting techniques. Our demonstration uses inexpensive single-mode fiber at standard telecommunications wavelengths as the sensing fiber, which enables extremely low-loss experiments and compatibility with existing fiber networks. We show that the uncertainty of the temperature measurement decreases with longer integration periods, but is ultimately limited by the calibration uncertainty. Temperature uncertainty on the order of 3 K is possible with spatial resolution of the order of 1 cm and integration period as small as 60 seconds. Also, we show that the measurement is subject to systematic uncertainties, such as polarization fading, which can be reduced with a polarization diversity receiver.