Optical Pulse Coding Research Articles

Performance enhancement of optical pulse coding phase-sensitive OTDR system with genetic-optimized code.

Optical pulse coding (OPC) in phase-sensitive optical time-domain reflectometry (φ-OTDR) traditionally relies on standard coding sequences as probe pulse trains, which usually suffer the problem of distorted probe pulse caused by the gain saturation in erbium-doped fiber amplifier (EDFA). To improve the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and mitigate distortion caused by the EDFA gain saturation, a genetic-optimized code (Go-code) based OPC φ-OTDR (GOPC φ-OTDR) scheme is proposed in this paper. The unique Go-code sequence generated by the distributed genetic algorithm (DGA) is explored in the field of φ-OTDR for the first time, and the coding sequence was optimized to adapt to the vibration sensing requirements in φ-OTDR. Theoretical analyses focused on EDFA gain saturation effects and coding gain were conducted. The experiment of GOPC φ-OTDR demonstrated significant improvements compared with Golay φ-OTDR, achieving less distortion in decoding response and approximately 7.48 dB phase demodulation SNR enhancement within a 10-km sensing range. This research marks Go-code's pioneering exploration into φ-OTDR, demonstrating substantial advancements in optimization metrics, and opening avenues for exploring advanced OPC technologies.

Golay Coding Φ-OTDR With Distributed Frequency-Drift Compensation

The performance of optical-pulse-coding (OPC) phase-sensitive optical time-domain reflectometry ( <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\boldsymbol {\Phi }$ </tex-math></inline-formula> -OTDR) has been improved significantly in recent years. However, laser frequency drift is still a crucial issue, as it reduces the peak to side-lobe ratio (PSR) in Golay coding <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\boldsymbol {\Phi }$ </tex-math></inline-formula> -OTDR. In this paper, a novel and simple distributed frequency-drift compensation method is proposed. As the phase accumulations of the reference fiber and the sensing fiber are consistent through theoretical analysis and experimental verification, the frequency drift can be compensated by injecting the modulated Golay coding pulses into two fibers at the same time, and subtracting the phase drift of the sensing fiber and the reference fiber. In order to verify the distributed compensation effect, a two-point perturbation measurement experiment is carried out in 9.7 km sensing range. As a result, the far-end signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is enhanced and the demodulation perturbation SNRs are increased by 2.8 dB and 18.9 dB separately compared with the case without frequency drift compensation. Furthermore, this scheme can also be used in other complex coding systems, providing more possibilities for system designs.

Towards fast sensing along ultralong BOTDA: flatness enhancement by utilizing injection-locked dual-bandwidth probe wave.

Brillouin optical time-domain analysis (BOTDA) using distributed Brillouin amplification (DBA) only requires a milliwatt-level pump to achieve a sensing range beyond 100 km, which provides a powerful tool for temperature/strain sensing. However, similar to the majority of other long-range BOTDAs, the state-of-the-art reports require > 1000 times average, severely restricting the sensing speed. The blind area over tens of kilometers caused by the nonuniform Brillouin response and parasitic amplitude modulation (AM) are crucial factors affecting the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). Here, a comprehensive performance optimization and substantial enhancement for BOTDA sensors was presented by the direct demodulation of an injection-locked dual-bandwidth probe wave. Injection locking (IL) can completely eliminate the impact of AM noise; dual-bandwidth probe enables self-adaptive pulse loss compensation, thereby intensifying the SNR flatness along the ultralong fiber, and direct probe demodulation can overcome nonlocal effects and allows ∼19.7 dB enhancement of probe input power. Therefore, using only 100 times average, ∼148.3 km sensing, and ∼5 m spatial resolution were achieved with < ∼0.8 MHz standard deviation of Brillouin frequency shift (BFS) over a broad range (∼131.7 km). The reduction in averages was more than 10 times that of the reported majority of long-range BOTDAs. Such performances were achieved without using time-consuming or post-processing techniques, such as optical pulse coding and image denoising. Because this approach is compatible with optical chirp chain technique without frequency sweeping, fast acquisition (0.3 s) was also realized, which has the potential for fast sensing at 3.3 Hz along a ∼150 km fiber.

Bipolar-Coding $\Phi$-OTDR with Interference Fading Elimination and Frequency Drift Compensation

Optical-pulse-coding (OPC) technique can break the trade-offs between key parameters of distributed fiber-optic sensing systems, therefore it has received great attention in recent years. OPC Φ-OTDR has achieved significant performance improvements over conventional Φ-OTDR; however, scan-rate, interference fading and frequency drift remain critical issues for this type of sensing systems. In this article, for the first time bipolar Golay coding Φ-OTDR with heterodyne detection is proposed and realized to address the scan-rate issue, the laser frequency drift is compensated by a novel real-time compensation method, and the interference fading is eliminated by incorporating the spectrum extraction and remix method. Theoretical analysis is described in detail, and the benefits provided by bipolar code are experimentally demonstrated in 10 km sensing range with 0.92m spatial resolution, achieving 7.1 dB SNR improvement and halving measurement time compared with unipolar code case. By addressing frequency drift and fading issues, the distributed sensing capability of OPC Φ-OTDR becomes available, at a reasonable expense of enlarged spatial resolution (6 m). It should be noted that, such a bipolar scheme can also be applied in other coding schemes, opening up more possibilities for OPC in Φ-OTDR.

High-efficiency DBA-BOTDA with optimized SNR by multiple bandwidths pump modulation

For Brillouin optical time-domain analysis (BOTDA) based on distributed Brillouin amplification (DBA), constant Brillouin response achieved by the exponentially variable bandwidth/intensity pump modulation suffers from the much lower pumping efficiency for long-range sensing, which counterbalances the merit of DBA. In this Letter, pump modulation by multiple constant bandwidths was proposed and demonstrated. The ∼98.9 km sensing with ∼5 m spatial resolution and no use of optical pulse coding (OPC) was achieved by ∼8 dBm Brillouin pump, which is lower by ∼9 dB in theory by comparison with exponentially increased bandwidth modulation. Compared with traditional DBA-BOTDA, signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) enhancement with >4.6 dB was obtained. The flattened standard deviation (STD) of Brillouin frequency shift (BFS) (less than ∼2 MHz) along the whole fiber was demonstrated.

DBA-Based BOTDA Using Optical Comb Pump and Pulse Coding With a Single Laser

We proposed and demonstrated a new structure, which employs a single laser in Brillouin optical time-domain analysis sensor assisted by distributed Brillouin amplification. This structure can avoid the stability problem caused by laser frequency drift. In addition, we used an optical comb technique to suppress the distortion of pump pulse. Moreover, the feasibility of an optical pulse coding technology in this system was studied. In particular, we explored the influence of coding parameters on the transient gain saturation of the coded pulse. Results show that the coded pulse space and coding length must be optimized to suppress its transient gain saturation, by which the sensing with lower decoding error can be achieved.

Long-range BOTDA sensor over 50 km distance employing pre-pumped Simplex coding

We propose and demonstrate a long-range Brillouin optical time-domain analysis (BOTDA) sensor based on the pre-pumped Simplex coding technique. This approach combines Simplex coding with the pulse pre-pump technique, which takes full advantage of the signal-to-noise ratio enhancement provided by optical pulse coding and achieves meter-scale spatial resolution with an unbroadened Brillouin gain spectrum by the use of pre-pumped short pump pulse. Compared to the widely used differential pulse-width pair technique, a comparable performance can be realized while the measurement time is reduced by half. The theoretical analysis of pre-pumped Simplex coding applied to BOTDA systems is presented and a proof-of-concept experiment is carried out along a ∼51 km single-mode fiber composed of two fiber segments with slightly different Brillouin frequency shift values. With the proposed technique, Brillouin frequency shifts of the two different fiber sections at the end of the sensing fiber are clearly distinguished, and the obtained spatial resolution and temperature/strain accuracy along the sensing fiber are respectively 1 m and . According to the experimental results, we believe that the BOTDA employing pre-pumped Simplex coding is able to realize extra-long distance sensing without Raman amplification, while keeping a high spatial resolution and measurement accuracy.

Long-range accelerated BOTDA sensor using adaptive linear prediction and cyclic coding.

We propose and experimentally demonstrate a long-range accelerated Brillouin optical time domain analysis (BOTDA) sensor that exploits the complementary noise reduction benefits of adaptive linear prediction and optical pulse coding. The combined technique allows using orders of magnitude less the number of averages of the backscattered BOTDA traces compared to a standard single pulse BOTDA, enabling distributed strain measurement over 10 km of a standard single mode fiber with meter-scale spatial resolution and 1.8 MHz Brillouin frequency shift resolution. By optimizing the system parameters, the measurement is achieved with only 20 averages for each Brillouin gain spectrum scanned frequency, allowing for an eight times faster strain measurement compared to the use of cyclic pulse coding alone.

Extending the Real Remoteness of Long-Range Brillouin Optical Time-Domain Fiber Analyzers

The real remoteness of a distributed optical fiber sensor based on Brillouin optical time-domain analysis is considerably extended in this paper using seeded second-order Raman amplification and optical pulse coding. The presented analysis and the experimental results demonstrate that a proper optimization of both methods combined with a well-equalized two-sideband probe wave provide a suitable solution to enhance the signal-to-noise ratio of the measurements when an ultra-long sensing fiber is used. In particular, the implemented system is based on an extended optical fiber length, in which half of the fiber is used for sensing purposes, and the other half is used to carry the optical signals to the most distant sensing point, providing also a long fiber for distributed Raman amplification. Power levels of all signals launched into the fiber are properly optimized in order to avoid nonlinear effects, pump depletion, and especially any power imbalance between the two sidebands of the probe wave. This last issue turns out to be extremely important in ultra-long Brillouin sensing to provide strong robustness of the system against pump depletion. This way, by employing a 240 km-long optical fiber-loop, sensing from the interrogation unit up to a 120 km remote position (i.e., corresponding to the real sensing distance away from the sensor unit) is experimentally demonstrated with a spatial resolution of 5 m. Furthermore, this implementation requires no powered element in the whole 240 km fiber loop, providing considerable advantages in situations where the sensing cable crosses large unmanned areas.

Optimization of a DPP-BOTDA sensor with 25 cm spatial resolution over 60 km standard single-mode fiber using Simplex codes and optical pre-amplification

Sub-meter distributed optical fiber sensing based on Brillouin optical time-domain analysis with differential pulse-width pairs (DPP-BOTDA) is combined with the use of optical pre-amplification and pulse coding. In order to provide significant measurement SNR enhancement and to avoid distortions in the Brillouin gain spectrum due to acoustic-wave pre-excitation, the pulse width and duty cycle of Simplex coding based on return-to-zero pulses are optimized through simulations. In addition, the use of linear optical pre-amplification increases the receiver sensitivity and the overall dynamic range of DPP-BOTDA measurements. Experimental results demonstrate for first time a spatial resolution of ~25 cm over a 60 km standard single-mode fiber (equivalent to ~240 k discrete sensing points) with temperature resolution of 1.2°C and strain resolution of 24 με.

Experimental Demonstration on 2.5-m Spatial Resolution and 1 $^{\circ}$C Temperature Uncertainty Over Long-Distance BOTDA With Combined Raman Amplification and Optical Pulse Coding

The combination of Raman amplification and optical pulse coding (OPC) is proposed to reduce the frequency uncertainty in a long-distance Brillouin optical time-domain analyzer (BOTDA) under higher spatial resolution. The experimental characterization of temperature sensing with measurement accuracy ~ 1°C under ~ 2.5-m spatial resolution over a whole length of sensing fiber is demonstrated. The sensing fiber is composed of 49.6-km fiber at 10.8-GHz Brillouin frequency shift (BFS) and 25-km fiber at 11.005 GHz.

Enhanced Simultaneous Distributed Strain and Temperature Fiber Sensor Employing Spontaneous Brillouin Scattering and Optical Pulse Coding

<para xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> In this work, we propose the use of optical pulse coding techniques for simultaneous strain and temperature sensing based on spontaneous Brillouin scattering. Optical pulse coding provides a significant receiver signal-to-noise ratio enhancement, allowing for accurate Brillouin intensity and frequency shift measurements at low peak power levels. Due to the cross-sensitivity of these two parameters on both temperature and strain, optical pulse coding improves the temperature and strain resolution and sensing range with respect to Brillouin sensors operating with conventional single-pulses at the same peak power level. The proposed technique provides a high-performance cost-effective solution avoiding the use of high peak power levels. </para>

Brillouin-Based Distributed Temperature Sensor Employing Pulse Coding

<para xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> A distributed temperature sensor based on spontaneous Brillouin scattering and employing optical pulse coding has been implemented and characterized using a direct-detection receiver. The signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) enhancement provided by coding is analyzed, along with the influence of coding in stimulated Brillouin threshold. Simplex-coding using 127 bit codeword provides up to 7 dB SNR improvement, allowing for temperature sensing over 21 km of dispersion shifted fiber with 3.1 K resolution and 40 m spatial resolution, permitting to avoid the use of optical pulse amplification. </para>

Tandem of electroabsorption modulators integrated with a DFB laser and an optical amplifier for short optical pulse generation and coding

The authors report on a photonic integrated circuit including a DFB laser and two electroabsorption modulators separated by an optical amplifier, for short optical pulse generation and coding. The monolithic integration is very simple, based on the use of the same active layer for the four optical functions. Pulse generation and coding is demonstrated at 10 Gbit/s, while the PIC is compatible with 20 Gbit/s operation.

Impulse responses of strong reflection holograms

Strong scattering in broad spatial bandwidth reflection holograms is analyzed by using numerical techniques. Transfer functions and impulse responses for various index modulations are found, and techniques for constructing holograms for optical pulse shaping, coding, and dispersion compensation are discussed.