Long-range and wide-band vibration sensing by using phase-sensitive OFDR to interrogate a weak reflector array

• Published in: Optics express Vol. 28; no. 12; pp. 18387 - 18396
• Main Authors: Zhang, Zhaopeng, Fan, Xinyu, He, Zuyuan
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 08.06.2020
• ISSN: 1094-4087; 1094-4087
• DOI: 10.1364/OE.390592

In this paper, we propose and experimentally demonstrate a novel quasi-distributed fiber-optic vibration sensing system, which can achieve vibration measurement with a wide frequency response over a long distance. The system is based on phase-sensitive optical frequency domain reflectometry ( ϕ -OFDR). The sensing part is a single-mode fiber (SMF) with auxiliary weak reflection points along it. By detecting the auxiliary weak reflection points, we can obtain the waveform of the vibration signal. In the experiments, single-point and multi-point vibrations with a wide-frequency response at 100 km are successfully measured, which validated the proposed system. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time to realize a wide-band vibration waveform measurement over such a long range by using reflectometry-based sensing system.