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Recent Trends in Distributed Optical Fiber Sensing Technology

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A special issue of Sensors (ISSN 1424-8220). This special issue belongs to the section "Optical Sensors".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (10 July 2022) | Viewed by 13781

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Special Issue Editors

Dr. Liyang Shao

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Guest Editor

Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen 518055, China
Interests: novel microstructured fiber and its applications; distributed Brillouin time-domain sensing technology; phase-sensitive optical time domain reflection technique; microwave photon sensing and measurement technology; lidar security applications; application research of optical information and sensing technology in the fields of rail transit, perimeter security, seismic monitoring, bridge and tunnel safety monitoring

Dr. Feng Wang

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor

College of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Nanjing University, Gulou District, Nanjing 210093, China
Interests: optical fiber sensors; distributed optical fiber sensing based on Brillouin, Rayleigh and Raman scattering; intelligent signal processing; integrated photonics

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Distributed optical fiber sensing (DOFS) technology has attracted much attention for static and dynamic measurements. The optical mechanisms include Brillouin, Rayleigh and Raman scattering, as well as some interferometric approaches. Over the last decade, researchers have made great efforts to develop high-performance distributed fiber sensors by improving the spatial resolution, dynamic response, sensing distance, measurement accuracy, frequency response range, and so on. Performance-enhancing methods have included the use of optical frequency combs, pulse coding, smart optical amplification schemes, signal processing techniques, artificial intelligence, and many others. Meanwhile, DOFS technology has been adopted in a wide range of application fields, such as structural health monitoring, intrusion detection, pipeline monitoring, fire detection, traffic tracking, geological exploration, and so on.

The objective of this Special Issue is to provide an update on the current state of the art of distributed optical fiber sensing, including fundamental research and novel field applications.

Dr. Liyang Shao
Dr. Feng Wang
Guest Editors

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Keywords

distributed optical fiber sensing
optical fibers
Rayleigh scattering, Raman scattering, and Brillouin scattering
distributed monitoring

Published Papers (7 papers)

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Research

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11 pages, 1838 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Fuzzy Logic System Assisted Sensing Resource Allocation for Optical Fiber Sensing and Communication Integrated Network

by Chenlin Zhang and Pan Wang

Sensors 2022, 22(20), 7708; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/s22207708 - 11 Oct 2022

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1059

Abstract

With the development of information transmission, there is an increasing demand for state monitoring of fiber-optic communication networks to improve the security and self-healing ability of the network. Distributed optical fiber sensing is one of the most attractive methods because it can achieve real-time detection of the whole network without additional sensing heads. However, when the sensing network is introduced into the communication network, the failure probability should be efficiently suppressed with limited sensing resources. In this paper, the fuzzy logic system is used to evaluate the impact of different sensing resource allocation on optical cable network quality. The link failure probability and path failure probability under the condition of uniform and non-uniform sensing resource allocation are simulated and analyzed, respectively. As shown in the analysis results, the failure probability under non-uniform allocation is significantly lower than under uniform allocation. In this paper, we discussed and addressed the allocation of the optical fiber sensing and communication integrated (OFSCI) network with the limited sensing resource for the first time. The results are helpful to develop an allocation strategy for optical fiber sensing and a communication integrated network with a higher robustness. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Recent Trends in Distributed Optical Fiber Sensing Technology)

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11 pages, 2843 KiB

Open AccessCommunication

Data Reduction in Phase-Sensitive OTDR with Ultra-Low Sampling Resolution and Undersampling Techniques

by Feihong Yu, Liyang Shao, Shuaiqi Liu, Weijie Xu, Dongrui Xiao, Huanhuan Liu and Perry Ping Shum

Sensors 2022, 22(17), 6386; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/s22176386 - 24 Aug 2022

Cited by 6 | Viewed by 1758

Abstract

Data storage is a problem that cannot be ignored in the long-term monitoring of a phase-sensitive optical time-domain reflectometry (Φ-OTDR) system. In this paper, we proposed a data-reduction approach for heterodyne Φ-OTDR using an ultra-low sampling resolution and undersampling techniques. The operation principles were demonstrated and experiments with different sensing configurations were carried out to verify the proposed method. The results showed that the vibration signal could be accurately reconstructed from the undersampled 1-bit data. A space saving ratio of 98.75% was achieved by converting 128 MB of data (corresponding to 268.44 ms of sensing time) to 1.6 MB. The proposed method led to a potentially new data-reduction approach for heterodyne Φ-OTDR, which also provided economical guidance for the selection of the data-acquisition device. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Recent Trends in Distributed Optical Fiber Sensing Technology)

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12 pages, 3328 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Directivity Dependence of a Distributed Fiber Optic Hydrophone on Array Structure

by Wenmin Li, Yu Chen, Yan Liang, Yang Lu and Zhou Meng

Sensors 2022, 22(16), 6297; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/s22166297 - 21 Aug 2022

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2006

Abstract

A distributed fiber optic hydrophone (DFOH) is a new type of fiber optic hydrophone (FOH) with adjustable structure. The dependence of the directivity of a DFOH on array structure is theoretically and experimentally studied. The directivity function of a sensing channel and that of a DFOH are derived. Based on the directivity function, the simulations are performed. Finally, the theoretical analysis is demonstrated by the experiments performed on Qingyang lake, and the results reveal that the longer sensing channel length guarantees the lower first-order side lobe and the narrower main lobe. As the channel length increased from 1 to 3, the main lobe width and first-order side lobe height decreased by 4.9° and 6 dB, respectively. In addition, channel spacing is irrelevant to directivity as the spacing is shorter than the wavelength. As the channel spacing increased from 0 to 1, the variations of the main lobe width and first-order side lobe height are lower than 0.5° and 0.94 dB, respectively. This study would provide guidance for the structure design of a distributed fiber optic hydrophone in signal processing. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Recent Trends in Distributed Optical Fiber Sensing Technology)

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12 pages, 5626 KiB

Open AccessArticle

High-Resolution and Large-Sensing-Range Liquid-Level Sensor Based on Optical Frequency Domain Reflectometry and No-Core Fiber

by Guolu Yin, Pengxi Yang, Hu Xiao, Yu Wang, Zeheng Zhang, Fabing Yan and Tao Zhu

Sensors 2022, 22(12), 4480; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/s22124480 - 14 Jun 2022

Viewed by 1684

Abstract

Liquid-level sensors are required in modern industrial and medical fields. Optical liquid-level sensors can solve the safety problems of traditional electrical sensors, which have attracted extensive attention in both academia and industry. We propose a distributed liquid-level sensor based on optical frequency domain reflectometry and with no-core fiber. The sensing mechanism uses optical frequency domain reflectometry to capture the strong reflection of the evanescent field of the no-core fiber at the liquid–air interface. The experimental results show that the proposed method can achieve a high resolution of 0.1 mm, stability of ±15 μm, a relatively large measurement range of 175 mm, and a high signal-to-noise ratio of 30 dB. The sensing length can be extended to 1.25 m with a weakened signal-to-noise ratio of 10 dB. The proposed method has broad development prospects in the field of intelligent industry and extreme environments. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Recent Trends in Distributed Optical Fiber Sensing Technology)

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10 pages, 1869 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Distributed Airflow Sensing Based on High-Spatial-Resolution BOTDA and a Self-Heated High-Attenuation Fiber

by Hongying Zhang, Yanyang Lei, Jinzhe Zhou and Yongkang Dong

Sensors 2022, 22(11), 4017; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/s22114017 - 26 May 2022

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1455

Abstract

An all-fiber distributed airflow sensing method based on a differential pulse-width pair Brillouin optical time domain analysis (DPP-BOTDA) and a self-heated high-attenuation fiber (HAF) is proposed and demonstrated. The HAF heated the sensing fiber, producing a gradient temperature distribution in it through physical contact, where the temperature distribution was obtained by DPP-BOTDA with a spatial resolution of 5 cm. The heat loss caused by the airflow was reflected in the decrease in the Brillouin frequency shift and spatially resolved by DPP-BOTDA. Distributed airflow sensing was experimentally demonstrated for measurements of airflow movement, multiple airflow sources and the deflection angle of the airflow. The positioning error of the airflow was no larger than ~2.2 cm; for the deflection angle measurements of the airflow, the maximum demodulation error was 2.5° within the angle range of 0–30°. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Recent Trends in Distributed Optical Fiber Sensing Technology)

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12 pages, 24853 KiB

Open AccessCommunication

Real-Time Multi-Class Disturbance Detection for Φ-OTDR Based on YOLO Algorithm

by Weijie Xu, Feihong Yu, Shuaiqi Liu, Dongrui Xiao, Jie Hu, Fang Zhao, Weihao Lin, Guoqing Wang, Xingliang Shen, Weizhi Wang, Feng Wang, Huanhuan Liu, Perry Ping Shum and Liyang Shao

Sensors 2022, 22(5), 1994; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/s22051994 - 03 Mar 2022

Cited by 22 | Viewed by 2960

Abstract

This paper proposes a real-time multi-class disturbance detection algorithm based on YOLO for distributed fiber vibration sensing. The algorithm achieves real-time detection of event location and classification on external intrusions sensed by distributed optical fiber sensing system (DOFS) based on phase-sensitive optical time-domain reflectometry (Φ-OTDR). We conducted data collection under perimeter security scenarios and acquired five types of events with a total of 5787 samples. The data is used as a spatial–temporal sensing image in the training of our proposed YOLO-based model (You Only Look Once-based method). Our scheme uses the Darknet53 network to simplify the traditional two-step object detection into a one-step process, using one network structure for both event localization and classification, thus improving the detection speed to achieve real-time operation. Compared with the traditional Fast-RCNN (Fast Region-CNN) and Faster-RCNN (Faster Region-CNN) algorithms, our scheme can achieve 22.83 frames per second (FPS) while maintaining high accuracy (96.14%), which is 44.90 times faster than Fast-RCNN and 3.79 times faster than Faster-RCNN. It achieves real-time operation for locating and classifying intrusion events with continuously recorded sensing data. Experimental results have demonstrated that this scheme provides a solution to real-time, multi-class external intrusion events detection and classification for the Φ-OTDR-based DOFS in practical applications. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Recent Trends in Distributed Optical Fiber Sensing Technology)

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Review

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19 pages, 8631 KiB

Open AccessReview

Recent Progress in Long-Range Brillouin Optical Correlation Domain Analysis

by Yahui Wang and Mingjiang Zhang

Sensors 2022, 22(16), 6062; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/s22166062 - 13 Aug 2022

Cited by 5 | Viewed by 1399

Abstract

Distributed optical fiber sensing technology has been widely applied in the areas of infrastructure health monitoring, national defense security, etc. The long-range high-spatial-resolution Brillouin optical correlation domain analysis (BOCDA) has extensive development and application prospects. In this paper, long-range BOCDAs are introduced and summarized. Several creative methods underpinning measurement range enlargement, including the interval enhancement of the adjacent correlation peak (CP), improvements in the signal-to-noise ratio, and the concurrent interrogation of multiple CPs, are discussed and experimentally verified, respectively. The main drawbacks in the present BOCDA schemes and avenues for future research and development have also been prospected. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Recent Trends in Distributed Optical Fiber Sensing Technology)

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