iScience (Jun 2020)

Enhanced Optical Fiber for Distributed Acoustic Sensing beyond the Limits of Rayleigh Backscattering

  • Paul S. Westbrook,
  • Kenneth S. Feder,
  • Tristan Kremp,
  • Eric M. Monberg,
  • Hongchao Wu,
  • Benyuan Zhu,
  • Lei Huang,
  • Debra A. Simoff,
  • Scott Shenk,
  • Vincent A. Handerek,
  • Mohammad Karimi,
  • Anthony Nkansah,
  • Alan Yau

Journal volume & issue
Vol. 23, no. 6
p. 101137

Abstract

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Summary: We report on engineered fibers with enhanced optical backscattering that exceeds Rayleigh scattering limits by more than one order of magnitude. We measure attenuation less than 0.5 dB/km from 1,300 to 1,650 nm. By controlling the enhanced backscatter over a 1.5-km length, we compensate for this attenuation, resulting in a higher backscatter signal at the end of the fiber. We demonstrate that the scattering strength may be stabilized for operation at temperatures above 200°C for at least 3 weeks. We show that the deleterious signal distortion due to the Kerr nonlinearity is within 10% of standard fiber. We then report on the use of these fibers in distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) measurements. A significant increase in acoustic signal-to-noise ratio leads to the possibility of improved spatial resolution in the enhanced fiber DAS system.

Keywords