Intra-Gauge Rotated Vector Sum (IG-RVS) for Rayleigh Fading Mitigation in Coherent {\phi}-OTDR Systems

TL;DR

This paper introduces IG-RVS, a DSP-based technique that mitigates Rayleigh fading in coherent φ-OTDR systems by leveraging spatial diversity and coherent summation to enhance signal stability.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel intra-gauge rotated vector sum method that effectively suppresses Rayleigh fading in coherent φ-OTDR using DSP-based spatial diversity exploitation.

Findings

IG-RVS reduces Rayleigh fading effects in φ-OTDR signals.

The method preserves spatial resolution while improving signal stability.

Experimental results demonstrate enhanced performance over existing techniques.

Abstract

We propose Intra-Gauge Rotated Vector Sum (IG-RVS), a DSP-based fading mitigation method for coherent ${\varphi}$-OTDR. IG-RVS exploits spatial diversity within the gauge length by phase-aligning and coherently summing neighboring bins, thereby suppressing Rayleigh fading while preserving spatial resolution.