Vector Brillouin optical time-domain analyzer for high-order acoustic modes

Abstract

Thanks to a double-frequency phase modulation scheme, we report a vector Brillouin optical time-domain analyzer (BOTDA). This BOTDA has a high immunity level to noise, and it features a phase spectrogram capability. It is well suited for complex situations involving several acoustic resonances, such as high-order longitudinal modes. It has notably been used to characterize a dispersion-shifted fiber, allowing us to report spectrograms with multiple acoustic resonances. A very high 57 dB dynamic range is also reported for 100-ns-long pulses simultaneously with a 16 cm numerical resolution.