A Fading Tolerant Phase-Sensitive Optical Time Domain Reflectometry Based on Phasing-Locking Structure

Abstract

The demand for phase-sensitive optical time domain reflectometry (φ-OTDR), which is capable of reconstructing external disturbance accurately, is increasing. However, φ-OTDR suffers from fading where Rayleigh backscattering traces (RBS) have low amplitude and may be lower than the noise floor. Therefore, signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is reduced. In conventional coherent φ-OTDR, an acoustic optical modulator (AOM), which consists of an RF driving source and an acousto-optic crystal, is commonly used to generate optical pulses and frequency shifts. Since RF driving and external modulation signals come from an independent oscillation source, every intermediate frequency (IF) trace has a different phase bias. Therefore, it is difficult to average the IF signals directly for noise reduction. In this paper, a coherent φ-OTDR system based on phase-locking structure was proposed. This structure provided a clock homologous carrier signal, a modulation signal and a data acquisition (DAQ) trigger signal. Then, moving average methods were taken on IF signals before phase demodulating to reduce the overall noise floor of the system. This new φ-OTDR is more tolerant to fading, which can provide higher accuracy for vibration reconstruction. The frequency response range of vibration was as low as 1Hz, and a 25dB improvement of SNR was achieved.