Dispersion engineering in distributed Brillouin dynamic sensing with spectrum engineering

Abstract

With the lowest threshold, stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) is one of the most common nonlinear effects in optical fibers. Due to the Kramers-Kronig relation, every SBS interaction is inevitably accompanied by a phase response, providing an excellent chance for dispersion manipulation. By engineering the Brillouin gain spectrum, numerous demanding requirements on dispersion engineering can be fufilled via SBS interactions in various applications. In this paper, examples of gain spectrum engineering and dispersion engineering for Brillouin static and dynamic sensing will be presented. With a well engineered gain spectrum, a static Brillouin sensor is more robust to noise and offers a 3-dB measurement accuracy enhancement. In simulations, more than one magnitude of sensitivity enhancement has been demonstrated for dynamic sensors.