Low-cost Brillouin optical time domain analysis (BOTDA) distributed sensor setup
A. Zornoza, A. Loayssa, Public University of Navarra (Spain)
We present a solution for Brillouin optical time domain analysis (BOTDA) long-range distributed sensing that contributes to improve considerably one of the most important problems these sensors have nowadays: the cost of the setup. We achieve this by simplifying the process to obtain a stable frequency shift between pump and Stokes waves. The technique we propose consist in obtaining the Stokes wave from the pump by frequency shifting in two steps: the first one with a so-called passive Brillouin frequency shifter (BFS), and the second one by low-speed modulation. Moreover, we demonstrate preliminary measurements of this system in typical long-range conditions, with 25km of fiber at 1m resolution, highlighting the sensor capacity.
