Performance improvement for long-range BOTDR sensing system based on high extinction ratio modulator

Author

Yixin Zhang ; Xuelin Wu ; Zhoufeng Ying ; Xuping Zhang

Author_Institution

Inst. of Opt. Commun. Eng., Nanjing Univ., Nanjing, China

Volume

50

Issue

14

fYear

2014

fDate

July 3 2014

Firstpage

1014

Lastpage

1016

Abstract

The leakage light of an electro-optic modulator induced by its finite extinction ratio (ER) may degrade the performance of the Brillouin optical time domain reflectometer (BOTDR) sensing system, especially for long distance measurement. A novel configuration of a modulator based on a synchronous optical switch is presented. Experimental results have shown that the performance of the sensing system can be obviously improved with the proposed high ER modulator. At the end of a 48.5 km sensing fibre, the maximum uncertainty of temperature measurement has been reduced from 5.2 to 0.8°C with a 25 m spatial resolution after making an improvement in the ER from 35 to 65 dB.

Keywords

distance measurement; electro-optical modulation; electro-optical switches; fibre optic sensors; measurement uncertainty; optical time-domain reflectometry; reflectometers; temperature measurement; Brillouin optical time domain reflectometer sensing system; ER modulator; distance 48.5 km; electrooptic modulator; finite extinction ratio; gain 35 dB to 65 dB; high extinction ratio modulator; long distance measurement; long-range BOTDR sensing system; sensing fibre; synchronous optical switch; temperature 5.2 degC to 0.8 degC;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Electronics Letters

Publisher

iet

ISSN

0013-5194

Type

jour

DOI

10.1049/el.2014.0909

Filename

6849588