Distributed Brillouin Sensing: Frequency-Domain Techniques

Abstract

The substantial progresses in fiber-optic communications in combination with the increasing economic and political interest in structural health monitoring have led to a commercial establishment of distributed Brillouin sensing. The sensor systems, mainly based on the time-domain techniques, have been successfully implemented in the areas such as pipeline leak detection, geohazard effects, and ground movement detection. This chapter introduces a further advancement in the area of Brillouin sensing in the frequency domain. The so-called Brillouin optical frequency-domain analysis (BOFDA) offers crucial perspectives in terms of dynamic range and cost efficiency. The main principle of the frequency-domain approach takes advantage of the reversibility between the time and frequency domain given by a Fourier transform in the analysis of linear systems. The hereby presented overview gives a summary of the benefits and challenges of frequency-domain measurements closely tied to the narrowband recording of the complex transfer function. This function relates the counterpropagating pump and probe laser light along the sensor fiber providing the pulse response of the measurement system by applying the inverse Fourier transform (IFT). The strain or temperature distribution can be then determined from the retrieved Brillouin frequency shift (BFS) profile along the fiber.