Restorability of Rayleigh Backscatter Traces Measured by Coherent OTDR with Precisely Frequency-Controlled Light Source

Abstract

This letter presents the first experimental results that confirm the restorability of Rayleigh backscatter traces from a single-mode fiber measured by using a coherent optical time domain reflectometer (OTDR) with a precisely frequency-controlled light source. Based on this restorability, we can measure the distributed strain and temperature along the fiber with a very high measurand resolution that is one to two orders of magnitude better than that provided by Brillouin-based techniques for a long length of fiber.