High spatial resolution φ-OFDR based on frequency-shift averaging and rotating vector summation

Abstract

The coherent fading noise hinders the spatial resolution enhancements of phase optical frequency domain reflectometry (φ-OFDR). To mitigate the coherent fading noise, this study introduces frequency-shift averaging and rotating vector summation for strain measurements. The original Rayleigh backscattering signal was first divided into numerous sub-segments in frequency domain by using the frequency-shift averaging, and each sub-signal segment was transferred into vector signal with both intensity and phase information by using the rotating vector summation. Furthermore, a spatial position correction algorithm is incorporated to counteract the degradation of phase coherent, facilitating large-scale strain measurements. After optimizing the sub-frequency range and overlap ratio of the sub-signal in the frequency domain, we experimentally demonstrated that this method achieves strain measurement with a broad strain range of 2000 με, a high spatial resolution of 0.54 mm, and a high precision of 0.87%.