Theory and design consideration for cross-talk-free quasi-distributed sensing of fast fiber phase variation

摘要

It is the first time, to the best of the author's knowledge, that a method for accurately detecting quasi-continuously distributed dynamic phase change in a fiber over a long range has been treated theoretically as an inverse problem. For interrogation, we have proposed a special architecture that performs a common spatiotemporal optical trajectory interferometric reflectometry. We have theoretically demonstrated that, by means of the architecture, fast phase changes occurring in a great number of fiber segments constituted by cascaded low-reflectance mirrors can be interrogated without intersegment cross-talk errors. A practical sensor system employing frequency modulated continuous wave data acquisition is designed and analyzed. The potential sensing performance is discussed. (C) 2018 Optical Society of America.