Investigation of the Radiation Effect on BOTDR Under Low Space Radiation Doses

Abstract

To verify the feasibility of Brillouin optical time domain reflector (BOTDR) applied in space station, three kinds of commercial fibers, YOFC fiber (about 1 km), Corning fiber (about 1 km) and Fujikura fibers (about 1.5 km), have been radiated by Co60 in radiation experiment. Based on the Brillouin Gain Spectrum (BGS) along sensing fiber, we analyze power curve of Brillouin backscattered light, Brillouin Frequency Shift (BFS) along sensing fiber and spatial resolution carefully. The results indicate that radiation has little effect on BFS when signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is large enough. However, since radiation will lead to radiation-induced attenuation, the amplitude of BGS will decrease accordingly. And if the SNR becomes small enough, the accurate BFS cannot be obtained. For the stressed fiber section of BOTDR, the result shows that radiation has little effect on the strain coefficient at the total radiation dose of 200 Gy, but radiation will deteriorate the spatial resolution of BOTDR with the increase of radiation dose. These results are good references for the introduction of BOTDR to space station.

Keywords

• Brillouin optical time domain reflector
• space radiation