Improvement of a measurement range of optical frequency domain reflectometry by a frequency-shifted feedback laser

Abstract

Summary form only given. Optical reflectometry is of importance in various fields such as diagnostics of optical communication network, fiber optic sensors and so on. To implement these applications, it is favorable to achieve a better spatial resolution than 1 cm over an operating range of tens of kilometers. Such performance, however, has not yet been reported as far as we know. Recently we demonstrated an optical frequency domain reflectometry (OFDR) using a frequency-shifted feedback (FSF) laser, and a distance of 3.7 km was measured with a spatial resolution of 9.4 mm. In the paper we demonstrate a long distance (>10 km), high resolution (/spl sim/1 cm) OFDR by the FSF laser.