Distributed Temperature and Strain Sensing Using Brillouin Backscattering

Summary A new sensing device is presented able to simultaneously measure strain and temperature using Brillouin backscattering in an optical fiber. Simultaneous measurement of both power and shift distributions of Brillouin and Rayleigh is made, and we obtain fully distributed measurements of strain and temperature. This sensor has been characterized and calibrated with a specific laboratory test bench. This sensor can achieve a distributed temperature measurement independent to the strain in the fiber with a 1.7 °C temperature repeatability, and with 1 m spatial resolution, over a sensing length of 10 km.