Channel Capacity of Wavelength Division Multiplexing-Based Brillouin Optical Time Domain Sensors

We propose and demonstrate a novel WDM-based Brillouin optical time domain analysis (BOTDA) sensor using Brillouin loss configuration, and theoretically analyze channel capacity of WDM-based brillouin optical time domain reflectometry (BOTDR) and BOTDA sensors by considering the fiber dispersion and nonlinear effects in sensing fibers. A three-wavelength WDM-based BOTDA senor is experimentally validated in the distributed temperature measurement of a 23-km-long standard telecom fiber (SMF-28), demonstrating an electrical signal-to-noise ratio enhancement of 9.2 dB. The numerical calculation results of the channel capacity of WDM-based Brillouin optical time domain sensors show that, when compared with the conventional single-wavelength BOTDR and BOTDA sensors, 11-wavelength BOTDR and BOTDA sensor using large effective area fiber can respectively achieve 8.4 and 20.8 dB signal-noise-ratio improvement (SNRI), and 7-wavelength BOTDR and BOTDA sensor using SMF-28 can respectively achieve 7.2 B and 16.9 dB SNRI without evident spatial resolution degradation and nonlinear impairment.