Differential Pulse-width Pair Brillouin Optical Time-domain Analysis Research Articles

Distributed Airflow Sensing Based on High-Spatial-Resolution BOTDA and a Self-Heated High-Attenuation Fiber.

An all-fiber distributed airflow sensing method based on a differential pulse-width pair Brillouin optical time domain analysis (DPP-BOTDA) and a self-heated high-attenuation fiber (HAF) is proposed and demonstrated. The HAF heated the sensing fiber, producing a gradient temperature distribution in it through physical contact, where the temperature distribution was obtained by DPP-BOTDA with a spatial resolution of 5 cm. The heat loss caused by the airflow was reflected in the decrease in the Brillouin frequency shift and spatially resolved by DPP-BOTDA. Distributed airflow sensing was experimentally demonstrated for measurements of airflow movement, multiple airflow sources and the deflection angle of the airflow. The positioning error of the airflow was no larger than ~2.2 cm; for the deflection angle measurements of the airflow, the maximum demodulation error was 2.5° within the angle range of 0–30°.

Structural Crack Detection Using DPP-BOTDA and Crack-Induced Features of the Brillouin Gain Spectrum

Structural damage generally initiates in the form of structural cracks. Thus, developing efficient crack detection techniques is of great importance for the structural health monitoring. In this paper, a new crack identification method is proposed, which is based on the differential pulse-width pair Brillouin optical time domain analysis (DPP-BOTDA) technology and the irregular features of Brillouin gain spectrum (BGS) in the fiber due to structural cracks. The proposed method provides a new way to detect and quantify structural cracks without knowing the strain in the structure. First, the working mechanism of DPP-BOTDA is introduced to illustrate the reason that the DPP-BOTDA, compared to traditional BOTDA technique, can significantly improve the spatial resolution of distributed strain sensing, which is critical for structural crack detection. Then, the BGSs in the fiber with the presence of structural cracks, measured by the DPP-BOTDA, are numerically simulated, from which the crack-induced irregular features of the BGS are summarized. Based these irregular features, new structural crack detection and quantification methods are proposed, which are found to be independent of structural stain. Finally, an experiment is conducted on a simple supported reinforced concrete (RC) beam. The results demonstrate that by using the BGS measured by the DPP-BOTDA, the proposed structural crack identification method successfully detects the occurrence of structural cracks and relatively accurately predicts the crack widths.

Liquid-level sensing method based on differential pulse-width pair Brillouin optical time-domain analysis and a self-heated high attenuation fiber.

A liquid-level sensing method based on differential pulse-width pair Brillouin optical time-domain analysis (DPP-BOTDA) combining with a self-heated high attenuation fiber (HAF) is proposed, where the principle is to locate the temperature abruption position at the interface between liquid and air caused by their different thermal diffusion rates. A Panda polarization-maintaining fiber is used as the sensing optical fiber, which is tightly glued alongside a laser-powered HAF. Heated by a high-power laser, the temperature of the HAF can increase and exhibits approximately exponential attenuation with the light propagation direction, which induces a similar temperature distribution over the sensing fiber. By using a 5-cm spatial resolution DPP-BOTDA and a 1.4-W heating light, temperature distributions of the sensing fiber are measured for different water levels, and the results indicate that distributed liquid-level sensing with a range of 20 cm and a resolution of 1 cm is realized using our method.

Online distributed strain measurement of fiber Michelson hydrophones based on DPP-BOTDA with a pulsed-probe wave.

We propose and demonstrate a novel differential pulse-width pair Brillouin optical time domain analysis (DPP-BOTDA) system with a pulsed-probe wave for online distributed strain measurement of fiber Michelson hydrophones (FMHs). Different from the conventional DPP-BOTDA using a continuous probe wave, a pulsed-probe wave is used in our scheme to avoid the interferences between the reflected lights from the sensor arm and reference arm of the FMH, where the probe pulse width should be adjusting precisely equal to the time delay between the two arms. The Brillouin frequency shift (BFS) containing the strain and/or temperature information is measured by sweeping the frequency difference of the probe pulse and the pump pulse. In the experiment, an optimized 8/8.5 ns pump pulse pair is applied to realize a 5-cm spatial resolution, and the probe pulses of 624.5 ns and 1269 ns are applied to measure the strain distribution of the sensor arms of two FMHs. We have successfully measured the temperature-induced strain of a FMH with an arm length difference of 62.45 m as temperature increases from -40°C to 80°C and the distributed strain variation of the other FMH with the arm length difference of 126.91 m as the hydrostatic pressure increases from 0.1 MPa to 10 MPa. The results indicate that the proposed scheme can provide a desirable solution for online distributed strain measurement of the FMHs.

Study of Raman amplification in DPP-BOTDA sensing employing Simplex coding for sub-meter scale spatial resolution over long fiber distances

The impact of Raman amplification and Simplex coding is studied in combination with differential pulse-width pair Brillouin optical time-domain analysis (DPP-BOTDA) to achieve sub-meter spatial resolution over very long sensing distances. An optimization of the power levels for the Raman pumps, Brillouin pump and signal has been carried out through numerical simulations, maximizing the signal levels and avoiding at the same time nonlinear effects and pump depletion. A reduction of acoustic-wave-induced distortions in the Brillouin gain spectrum down to negligible levels has also been achieved by numerical optimization of the pulse width and duty cycle of return-to-zero Simplex coding, providing significant signal-to-noise ratio enhancement. Strain–temperature sensing over 93 km standard SMF is achieved with a strain/temperature accuracy of 34µε/1.7 °C, and 50 cm spatial resolution throughout the fiber length.

Limitations and strategies to improve measurement accuracy in differential pulse-width pair Brillouin optical time-domain analysis sensing

In this work, we analyze the effects of Brillouin gain and Brillouin frequency drifts on the accuracy of the differential pulse-width pair Brillouin optical time-domain analysis (DPP-BOTDA). In particular, we demonstrate numerically that the differential gain is highly sensitive to variations in the Brillouin gain and/or Brillouin shift occurring during the acquisition process, especially when operating with a small pulse pair duration difference. We also propose and demonstrate experimentally a method to compensate for these drifts and consequently improve measurement accuracy.

2 cm spatial-resolution and 2 km range Brillouin optical fiber sensor using a transient differential pulse pair

We report a high-spatial-resolution and long-range distributed temperature sensor through optimizing differential pulse-width pair Brillouin optical time-domain analysis (DPP-BOTDA). In DPP-BOTDA, the differential signal suffers from a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) reduction with respect to the original signals, and for a fixed pulse-width difference the SNR reduction increases with the pulse width. Through reducing the pulse width to a transient regime (near to or less than the phonon lifetime) to decrease the SNR reduction after the differential process, the optimized 8/8.2 ns pulse pair is applied to realize a 2 cm spatial resolution, where a pulse generator with a 150 ps fall-time is used to ensure the effective resolution of DPP-BOTDA. In the experiment, a 2 cm spatial-resolution hot-spot detection with a 2 °C temperature accuracy is demonstrated over a 2 km sensing fiber.

High-resolution DPP-BOTDA over 50 km LEAF using return-to-zero coded pulses

Coded optical probe pulses in return-to-zero/non-return-to-zero (RZ/NRZ) formats are used for long-range distance sensing based on a differential pulse-width pair Brillouin optical time-domain analysis (DPP-BOTDA) in order to enhance the spatial resolution and measurement accuracy. It is found that using the RZ format maintains the Brillouin spectral shape, enhances the sensing range and leads to a higher signal-to-noise ratio compared to a single-pulse Brillouin optical time-domain analysis. With 512 bit RZ-coded pulse pairs of 60/55 ns for the DPP-BOTDA, a spatial resolution of approximately 0.5 m and a strain resolution of 12 microepsilon (which is equivalent to a 0.7 MHz Brillouin frequency shift) have been achieved over a 50 km large effective area fiber.

Differential Brillouin gain for improving the temperature accuracy and spatial resolution in a long-distance distributed fiber sensor

We demonstrate a 12 km differential pulse-width pair Brillouin optical time-domain analysis (DPP-BOTDA) using 40 ns and 50 ns pulses with DC-coupled detection. A spatial resolution of 1 m and a narrowband Brillouin gain spectrum of 33 MHz are obtained simultaneously compared with 88 MHz with the use of 10 ns pulses in a conventional BOTDA. The experimental results show that the differential Brillouin gain of a 40/50 ns pulse pair is 7 times stronger than the direct Brillouin gain of BOTDA with the use of a 10 ns pulse, and the temperature uncertainty is 0.25 degrees C compared with 1.8 degrees C for a 10 ns pulse. As the pulse-width difference decreases from 10 ns to 1 ns, corresponding to a spatial resolution from 1 m to 10 cm, the prediction of temperature uncertainty will only increase from 0.25 degrees C to 0.8 degrees C for DPP-BOTDA over a 12 km long single-mode fiber.

Differential pulse-width pair BOTDA for high spatial resolution sensing

A differential pulse-width pair Brillouin optical time domain analysis (DPP-BOTDA) for centimeter spatial resolution sensing using meter equivalent pulses is proposed. This scheme uses the time domain waveform subtraction at the same scanned Brillouin frequency obtained from pulse lights with different pulse-widths (e.g. 50ns and 49ns) to form the differential Brillouin gain spectrum (BGS) at each fiber location. The spatial resolution is defined by the average of the rise and fall time equivalent fiber length for a small stress section rather than the pulse-width difference equivalent length. The spatial resolution of 0.18m for the 50/49ns pulse pair and 0.15m for 20/19ns pulse pair over 1km sensing length with Brillouin frequency shift accuracy of 2.6MHz are demonstrated.