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A method for the optimal fiber input power determination is presented by employing the variation characteristics of signal to noise ratio (SNR) in spontaneous Brillouin-scattering-based sensing system. And a heterodyne detection system is constructed for measuring the Brillouin scattering spectra with different fiber input powers. The Brillouin spectrum width and system SNR can be simultaneously measured from these spectra, and the optimal fiber input power can be obtained from such information. In the experiment, for 48.8-km-long standard single-mode fiber (SSMF), the optimal fiber input power values are all approximately 0 dBm obtained by the maximum SNR position for different local oscillator power values and average times.

The application of Golay pulse coding technique in spontaneous Brillouin-based distributed temperature sensor based on self-heterodyne detection of Rayleigh and Brillouin scattering is theoretically and experimentally analyzed. The enhancement of system signal to noise ratio (SNR) and reduction of temperature measurement error provided by coding are characterized. By using 16-bit Golay coding, SNR can be improved by about 2.77 dB, and temperature measurement error of the 100 m heated fiber is reduced from 1.4 °C to 0.5 °C with a spatial resolution of 13 m. The results are believed to be beneficial for the performance improvement of self-heterodyne detection Brillouin optical time domain reflectometer.

The wide range power dependence of vector stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) gain is theoretically and experimentally characterized by a mathematical model and measurement system based on the heterodyne pump–Stokes technique. The results show that SBS phase shift is much more tolerant of pump depletion than SBS amplitude gain, hence the performance improvement of the SBS-based distributed sensing system can be achieved by measuring the SBS phase shift spectrum. The discussion about the measured Brillouin spectrum width versus pump power at different Stokes powers reveals that the occurrence of nonnegligible pump depletion imposes a restriction on the determination of pump and Stokes powers in an SBS amplitude gain-based application system. The amplitude gain and phase shift of vector SBS gain increase with the increase of pump power and decrease with the increase of Stokes power, which indicates that the design strategy with smaller Stokes power and higher pump power is reasonable. And the measured center-asymmetry of the SBS phase shift spectrum is mainly caused by the nonlinear refractive index, which puts a limitation on the maximum pump power. The obtained results can provide a useful basis for the optimal design of practical vector SBS gain-based application systems.

A high-accuracy Brillouin frequency shift (BFS) measurement system for vector Brillouin optical time-domain analysis-based temperature sensor is proposed, in which double sideband modulation is used and the stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) gain and loss processes work together to generate a superimposed SBS phase-shift spectrum. The measurement principle is analyzed by mathematical modeling and the proof-of-concept experiment is performed by using a 100-m long standard single-mode fiber. The theoretical and experimental results reveal that the temperature sensitivity of BFS obtained from the measured SBS phase-shift spectrum is 1.059 MHz / ° C , and the measurement error of temperature is only half that in traditional single sideband-based system, which indicates that the proposed technique can realize high-accuracy temperature measurement and have huge potential in the field of long-distance and high-accuracy sensing.

A useful method for eliminating the detrimental effect of laser frequency instability on Brillouin signals by employing the self-heterodyne detection of Rayleigh and Brillouin scattering is presented. From the analysis of Brillouin scattering spectra from fibers with different lengths measured by heterodyne detection, the maximum usable pulse width immune to laser frequency instability is obtained to be about 4 µs in a self-heterodyne detection Brillouin optical time domain reflectometer (BOTDR) system using a broad-band laser with low frequency stability. Applying the self-heterodyne detection of Rayleigh and Brillouin scattering in BOTDR system, we successfully demonstrate that the detrimental effect of laser frequency instability on Brillouin signals can be eliminated effectively. Employing the broad-band laser modulated by a 130-ns wide pulse driven electro-optic modulator, the observed maximum errors in temperatures measured by the local heterodyne and self-heterodyne detection BOTDR systems are 7.9 °C and 1.2 °C, respectively.