SNR enhanced distributed vibration fiber sensing system employing polarization OTDR and ultraweak FBGs

Xiangchuan Wang, Zhijun Yan, Feng Wang, Zhongyuan Sun, Chengbo Mou, Xuping Zhang*, Lin Zhang

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

A distributed fiber sensing system based on ultraweak FBGs (UWFBGs) assisted polarization optical time-domain reflectometry (POTDR) is proposed for load and vibration sensing with improved signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and sensitivity. UWFBGs with reflectivity higher than Rayleigh scattering coefficient per pulse are induced into a POTDR system to increase the intensity of the back signal. The performance improvement of the system has been studied. The numerical analysis has shown that the SNR and sensitivity of the system can be effectively improved by integrating UWFBGs along the whole sensing fiber, which has been clearly proven by the experiment. The experimental results have shown that by using UWFBGs with 1.1 x 10-5 reflectivity and 10-m interval distance, the SNR is improved by 11 dB, and the load and vibration sensitivities of the POTDR are improved by about 10.7 and 9 dB, respectively.

Original languageEnglish
Article number6800511
Number of pages11
JournalIEEE Photonics Journal
Volume7
Issue number1
Early online date22 Jan 2015
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Feb 2015

Bibliographical note

© 2015 IEEE. Translations and content mining are permitted for academic research only. Personal use is also permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission. See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.

Keywords

  • distributed fiber sensor
  • fiber gratings
  • fiber optics system
  • optical fiber polarization

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'SNR enhanced distributed vibration fiber sensing system employing polarization OTDR and ultraweak FBGs'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this