Harnessing oversampling in correlation-coded OTDR

TL;DR

This paper presents a theoretical and experimental study on how oversampling can enhance the coding gain and SNR in correlation-coded OTDR systems, leading to improved optical-fiber sensing performance.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach to exploit oversampling and detector bandwidth limitations to boost coding gain and SNR in correlation-coded OTDR, with practical implementation guidance.

Findings

Oversampling further improves coding gain in correlation-coded OTDR.

Bandwidth limitations of photodetectors can be used to optimize sampling rate for SNR gain.

The proposed method is practical and can be integrated into existing OTDR systems.

Abstract

Pulse coding is an effective method to overcome the trade-off between signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and spatial resolution in optical-fiber sensing systems based on optical time-domain reflectometry (OTDR). However, the coding gain has not been yet fully exploited. We provide a comprehensive theoretical analysis and experimental validation of the sampling criteria for correlation-coded OTDR, showing that the coding gain can be further improved by harnessing the oversampling. Moreover, the bandwidth-limited feature of the photodetector can also be utilized to select the sampling rate so that additional SNR enhancement is obtained. We believe this principle could be applied to any practical OTDR-based optical-fiber sensing technology, and serve to update existing systems based on correlation-coded OTDR in a straightforward manner at a relatively low cost.