Real-time locating and speed measurement of fibre fuse using optical frequency-domain reflectometry

Abstract

We propose and experimentally demonstrate real-time locating and speed measurement of fibre fuse by analysing the Doppler shift of reflected light using optical frequency-domain reflectometry (OFDR). Our method can detect the start of a fibre fuse within 200 ms which is equivalent to a propagation distance of about 10 cm in standard single-mode fibre. We successfully measured instantaneous speed of propagating fibre fuses and observed their subtle fluctuation owing to the laser power instability. The resolution achieved for speed measurement in our demonstration is 1 × 10-3 m/s. We studied the fibre fuse propagation speed dependence on the launched power in different fibres. Our method is promising for both real time fibre fuse monitoring and future studies on its propagation and termination.