Quasi-distributed acoustic sensing with interleaved identical chirped pulses for multiplying the measurement slew-rate

Vectorial distributed acoustic sensing based on a multicore fiber and phase-sensitive optical time-domain reflectometry

A vectorial distributed acoustic sensing (vDAS) system is proposed and demonstrated for distributed two-dimensional vector vibration measurements based on phase-sensitive optical time-domain reflectometry (ΦOTDR). An optical pulse compression (OPC) algorithm was used to achieve high spatial resolution and suppress fading noise, and a Rayleigh-enhanced seven-core fiber (eSCF) was used to magnify the differentials of Rayleigh backscattering (RBS) in various cores undergoing vibrations. A combination of OPC and eSCF allows the system to fully quantify perturbations with a spatial resolution of 1.1 m and a strain resolution of 1.1 pε/√Hz, achieving a maximum acceleration sensitivity of 1.04 mrad/g at 60 Hz and an orientation reconstruction error of 1.92°. The proposed vDAS system can achieve vectorial distributed vibration sensing without the need for specific fiber layouts or complex reconstruction algorithms, increasing its potential for applications in vertical seismic profiles or pipeline inspection.

Fabry-Perot Interference Fiber Acoustic Wave Sensor Based on Laser Welding All-Silica Glass

Due to the small difference between the thermal expansion coefficients of silica optical fiber and silica glass, they are used as probe materials of optical fiber acoustic wave sensors. According to the light absorption characteristics of a pressure-sensitive silica diaphragm and silica glass, the laser welding of an all-silica Fabry–Perot (FP) interference optical fiber acoustic wave sensor with a CO₂ laser is proposed. For understanding the influence of thermal expansion of sealing air in an FP cavity and the drift of interference-intensity demodulation working point of a FP interference acoustic wave sensor, we designed a process for the laser welding of an ultra-thin silica diaphragm and sleeve and optical fiber and sleeve. The exhaust hole of the FP cavity is reserved in the preparation process, and an amplified spontaneous emission light source and a tunable optical-fiber FP filter are introduced to stabilize the working point. The sensor is tested with a 40 kHz sound vibration signal. The results show that the sound pressure sensitivity of the sensor to an acoustic source of 0.02–0.1 W/cm² is 6.59 mV/kPa. The linearity coefficient is 0.99975, indicating good linearity.

Ultrahigh scan-rate quasi-distributed acoustic sensing system using array match interrogation

Inspired by compressed sensing techniques, a method for significantly enhancing the maximum allowable scan rate in quasi-distributed acoustic sensing (Q-DAS) is described and studied. Matching the scan parameters to the interrogated array facilitates orders of magnitude improvement in the scan rate and a corresponding increase in the maximum slew rate (SR) of differential phase variations which can be measured without ambiguity. The method is termed array matched interrogation (AMI). To improve the method's SNR, maximum number of sensing sections and maximum range, the interrogation pulse can be replaced by a perfect periodic autocorrelation (PPA) code. This version of the method is referred to as coded array matched interrogation (C-AMI). The implementation of C-AMI is not trivial and requires special design rules which are derived and tested experimentally. The design rules ensure that the 'folding' of the returning peaks of the Q-DAS array into a scan period, which is much shorter than the fiber's roundtrip time, will not lead to overlaps. The method demonstrated a scan rate of 20 times higher than the common limit and measurement of unprecedented slew-rate of 10.5 ×10⁶ rad/s.

Phase error analysis and unwrapping error suppression in phase-sensitive optical time domain reflectometry

Phase-sensitive optical time domain reflectometry becomes an effective tool to realize distributed sensing, and the optical phase of the received light is usually used to quantify the strain for both dynamic and static measurement. The analysis on the overall phase error has been improved by considering the proportionality of the detection noise to the local optical power. The estimation accuracy is greatly improved by using the proposed theory, the probability density of the estimation accuracy over 99% is > 0.6, ∼39 times larger than the previously reported method. The phase unwrapping may malfunction due to the noisy signal, causing large phase errors. Point break detection algorithms are used to locate the incorrect phase unwrapping points, so the temporal evolution of the phase retrieved at each position can be divided into several sections with different offset. The phase unwrapping error is then suppressed by removing the offset.

Channel-multiplexing for quasi-distributed acoustic sensing with orthogonal codes

With the increasing demands for large-scale acoustic sensing in many important fields such as hydrophone, vehicle tracking and pipeline monitoring, optical fiber-based distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) has experienced a rapid development. In recent years, quasi-distributed acoustic sensing (QDAS) based on single mode fiber with enhanced point array has emerged, which is a good approach to improve signal-to-noise ratio and deal with the interference-fading problem in DAS. However, similar to DAS, the performance of QDAS is also limited by the finite frequency domain resources. To break the trade-off between sensing bandwidth and distance, additional frequency domain resources are always needed to multiplex the sensing channel. Multiple-input multiple-output coding technology is an approach to realize QDAS channel-multiplexing with the orthogonal probe waves in the same frequency band. In this paper, the iteration constrain condition of the orthogonal codes is modified, and the generation method of more orthogonal codes with high and consistent suppression ratio for QDAS is provided. In the demonstration experiment, the QDAS has successfully achieved 5 times the sensing bandwidth expansion on a 5.19 km fiber based on 5 new orthogonal codes on the same frequency, with 5 m spatial resolution and 10 p ε/H z strain noise level.