Reaching the ultimate performance limit given by non-local effects in BOTDA sensors

Abstract

Non-local effects have been traditionally identified as one of the most limiting factors of the performance of Brillouin optical time-domain analyzers. These phenomena, directly linked with the energy gained/lost by the pump pulse, limit the probe power and ultimately the SNR of the system. Several solutions have been proposed, although none offers the possibility to increase the probe power until its limit, the onset of amplified spontaneous Brillouin scattering. In this work, we propose a technique that avoids non-local effects and permits to set the probe power at its maximum, reaching a 100 km sensing distance with 2 meter resolution.