Enhancement of signal-to-noise ratio in Brillouin optical time domain analyzers by dual-probe detection

Haritz Iribas; Alayn Loayssa; Florian Sauser; Miguel Llera; Sébastien Le Floch

doi:10.1117/12.2265054

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23 April 2017 Enhancement of signal-to-noise ratio in Brillouin optical time domain analyzers by dual-probe detection

Haritz Iribas, Alayn Loayssa, Florian Sauser, Miguel Llera, Sébastien Le Floch

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Proceedings Volume 10323, 25th International Conference on Optical Fiber Sensors; 103237D (2017) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2265054
Event: 25th International Conference on Optical Fiber Sensors, 2017, Jeju, Korea, Republic of

Abstract

We demonstrate a simple technique to enhance the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) in Brillouin optical time-domain analysis sensors by the addition of gain and loss processes. The technique is based on the shift of the pump pulse optical frequency in a double-sideband probe system, so that the gain and loss processes take place at different frequencies. In this manner, the loss and the gain do not cancel each other out, and it makes possible to take advantage of both informations at the same time, obtaining an improvement of 3 dB on the SNR. Furthermore, the technique does not need an optical filtering, so that larger improvement on SNR and a simplification of the setup are obtained. The method is experimentally demonstrated in a 101 km fiber spool, obtaining a measurement uncertainty of 2.6 MHz (2σ) at the worst-contrast position for 2 m spatial resolution. This leads, to the best of our knowledge, to the highest figure-of-merit in a BOTDA without using coding or raman amplification.

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Haritz Iribas, Alayn Loayssa, Florian Sauser, Miguel Llera, and Sébastien Le Floch "Enhancement of signal-to-noise ratio in Brillouin optical time domain analyzers by dual-probe detection", Proc. SPIE 10323, 25th International Conference on Optical Fiber Sensors, 103237D (23 April 2017); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2265054

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