Alternative implementation of simplified Brillouin optical correlation-domain reflectometry

TL;DR

This paper presents an alternative simplified Brillouin optical correlation-domain reflectometry system that improves measurement accuracy by suppressing fixed correlation peaks and demonstrates high-resolution strain detection over a short fiber segment.

Contribution

The authors introduce a novel configuration using Fresnel reflection and fiber replacement to suppress fixed correlation peaks, enhancing measurement precision in Brillouin optical reflectometry.

Findings

Successfully suppressed the 0th correlation peak.

Achieved high signal-to-noise ratio in strain measurement.

Demonstrated detection of a 1.46-m-long strained fiber segment.

Abstract

We developed an alternative configuration of simplified Brillouin optical correlation-domain reflectometry, which can overcome the drawbacks of the original configuration. This system uses, as reference light, the light that is Fresnel reflected at a partial reflection point artificially produced near an optical circulator. We show that the influence of the 0th correlation peak fixed at the partial reflection point can be suppressed by replacing the nearby fibers with other fibers having different Brillouin frequency shift values (here, multi-mode fibers are used). Finally, we demonstrate a distributed measurement for detecting a 1.46-m-long strained section with a high signal-to-noise ratio.