A useful method for determination of optimal fiber input power in spontaneous Brillouin-scattering-based sensing system

Abstract

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.