Low-Bandwidth Cost-Effective Brillouin Frequency Sensing Using Reference Brillouin-Scattered Beam

We propose a method that down-converts the electrical bandwidth for Brillouin frequency shift sensors with heterodyne detection without the need for any expensive instruments or a complicated system. We discuss the power and coherency of the stimulated Brillouin scattering light required for the reference fiber. We confirm that the frequency bandwidth measured with the proposed method is much lower (0.2 GHz) than that measurable with conventional heterodyne detection (11 GHz). Moreover, the proposed method can measure the dependence of the Brillouin frequency shift on temperature.