Transient Effects in Gain-Clamped Discrete Raman Amplifier Cascades

This letter describes the dynamic characteristics of all-optically gain clamped discrete Raman amplifier chains. Amplifier cascades are analyzed under channels add/drop conditions in large bandwidth WDM metro-core applications. Numerical results show that the long Raman fiber length does not allow instantaneous gain clamping giving rise to wide power oscillations in long Raman amplifier chains. A possible way to limit this detrimental effect is suggested and numerically demonstrated

Distributed Raman optical amplification in phase coherent transfer of optical frequencies

We describe the application of Raman Optical-fiber Amplification (ROA) for the phase coherent transfer of optical frequencies in an optical fiber link. ROA uses the transmission fiber itself as a gain medium for bi-directional coherent amplification. In a test setup we evaluated the ROA in terms of on-off gain, signal-to-noise ratio, and phase noise added to the carrier. We transferred a laser frequency in a 200 km optical fiber link with an additional 16 dB fixed attenuator (equivalent to 275 km of fiber on a single span), and evaluated both co-propagating and counter-propagating amplification pump schemes, demonstrating nonlinear effects limiting the co-propagating pump configuration. The frequency at the remote end has a fractional frequency instability of 3e-19 over 1000 s with the optical fiber link noise compensation

BOTDA Sensing Employing a Modified Brillouin Fiber Laser Probe Source

A theoretical and experimental study has been carried out on a tunable dual pump-probe optical source for distributed Brillouin optical time-domain analysis (BOTDA). The developed source exploits a modified Brillouin ring laser technology and is capable of a tuning range of ∼200 MHz without using phase-locked loop or optical sideband generation techniques, and exhibits a linewidth smaller than 2.5 MHz and ∼0.5 mW power. In BOTDA experiments, the proposed source has demonstrated to be an efficient solution enabling distributed sensing over 10 km single mode fiber with a spatial resolution of ∼4 m, and a strain and temperature resolutions of ∼10 μϵ and ∼0.5 °C respectively

Study of injection-locked stabilized, short cavity Brillouin ring laser source design for fiber sensing applications

A new pump-seeded, short-cavity Brillouin ring laser source layout intended for Brillouin sensing applications is showcased, showing increased high maximum output (1.5 mW), a strong linewidth narrowing effect (producing light with a linewidth of 10 kHz) and limited relative intensity noise (RIN ~ −145 dB/Hz), providing an ultranarrow, highly stable BRL source that can also be employed as a pump-probe source for Brillouin optical time-domain analysis (BOTDA) applications

Fiber-Optic Distributed Sensor Based on Hybrid Raman and Brillouin Scattering Employing Multiwavelength Fabry–Pérot Lasers

We propose the use of standard multiwavelength Fabry–PÉrot (FP) lasers for distributed strain and temperature measurement in hybrid Raman- and Brillouin-based fiber-optic sensors. The multiple longitudinal modes of FP lasers allow for accurate spontaneous Raman scattering measurement and for simultaneous high-sensitivity coherent detection of the Brillouin frequency shift parameter for all longitudinal modes. Experimental results confirm great performance improvement in simultaneous strain and temperature measurement using a single optical fiber

Analysis of pulse modulation format in coded BOTDA sensors

A theoretical and experimental analysis of the impact of pulse modulation format on Brillouin optical time-domain analysis (BOTDA) sensors using pulse coding techniques has been carried out. Pulse coding with conventional non-return-to-zero (NRZ) modulation format is shown to induce significant distortions in the measured Brillouin gain spectrum (BGS), especially in proximity of abrupt changes in the fiber gain spectra. Such an effect, as confirmed by the theoretical analysis, is due to acoustic wave pre-excitation and non-uniform gain which depends on the bit patterns defined by the different codewords. A successful use of pulse coding techniques then requires to suitably optimize the employed modulation format in order to avoid spurious oscillations causing severe penalties in the attained accuracy. Coding technique with return-to-zero (RZ) modulation format is analyzed under different duty-cycle conditions for a 25 km-long sensing scheme, showing that low duty-cycle values are able to effectively suppress the induced distortions in the BGS and allow for spatially-accurate, high-resolution strain and temperature measurements being able to fully exploit the provided coding gain (~7.2 dB along 25 km distance) with unaltered spatial resolution (1 meter). Although Simplex coding is used in our analysis, the validity of the results is general and can be directly applied to any intensity-modulation coding scheme

Optoelectronic measuring apparatus for distributed physical characteristic

Optoelectronic measuring apparatus comprising emitting means suitable, in use, to generate and modulating the optics power of a plurality of trains comprising a plurality of first electromagnetic pulses presenting a first given frequency and a first duration which can be determined substantially at- will; an optical transmission group for the first electromagnetic pulses comprising a waveguide; a detecting group suitable, in use, to sample the time-variation of at least an optical feature of at least an electromagnetic radiation; each radiation having interacted with at least a said train through given Brillouin scattering phenomena at least one portion of said waveguide

Analysis of optical pulse coding in spontaneous Brillouin-based distributed temperature sensors

A theoretical and experimental analysis of optical pulse coding techniques applied to distributed optical fiber temperature sensors based on spontaneous Brillouin scattering using the Landau-Placzek ratio (LPR) scheme is presented, quantifying in particular the impact of Simplex coding on stimulated Brillouin and Raman power thresholds. The signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) enhancement and temperature resolution improvement provided by coding are also characterized. Experimental results confirm that, differently from Raman-based sensors, pulse coding affects the stimulated Brillouin threshold, resulting in lower optimal input power levels; these features allow one to achieve high sensing performance avoiding the use of high peak power pulses