Enhanced Raman distributed temperature sensor using a high Raman gain fiber

We have designed and fabricated a single-mode Raman gain fiber (RGF) and use it to experimentally demonstrate a Raman distributed temperature sensor (RDTS) for high-precision temperature measurement with low power consumption. We have performed simulation to analyze the impact of fluorine-doped inner cladding on the control of the acoustic field and suppression of stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS), showing that the SBS threshold can be improved by 37dB at 6wt% fluorine-doping concentration. Taking advantage of high Raman gain, a maximum signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) improvement of 6dB has been realized by using RGF under the same pump power as by using single-mode fiber (SMF), and the temperature uncertainty at the fiber end is enhanced from 0.9°C to 0.5°C. To achieve comparable sensing accuracy as that of SMF-based RDTS, our RGF-based RDTS only consumes half of the power, showing good energy efficiency. The magnitude of SNR and temperature uncertainty enhancement is limited by the relatively large fiber attenuation, but it can be further improved through optimization of the fiber design with high fluorine-doping concentration and graded index structure.