Sparse recovery methodologies for quasi-distributed dynamic strain sensing

Abstract

Abstract Quasi-distributed measurement of strain and/or temperature is often implemented using arrays of weakly reflecting fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs) whose reflection peaks are centered at the same nominal wavelength. The signals are obtained by measuring the phase difference between the reflections of consecutive FBGs. Typically, in such a system, the spatial resolution of the interrogator must be compatible with the spatial separation between consecutive FBGs. Insufficient resolution leads to an overlap of reflection peaks, a decrease in the differential-phase signal and poor sensitivity. In this paper, we study the use of two different sparsity based methodologies for improving the sensitivity of such quasi distributed acoustic sensing systems in the case where traditional signal processing approaches do not provide sufficient spatial resolution. These methods enable relaxing the requirements regarding the interrogator or, alternatively, reducing the needed separation between reflectors. Experimentally, these techniques were used to measure 1 kHz dynamic strain induced in a fiber segment between two discrete reflectors, located at the end of a 4 km long fiber. The separation between the reflectors was 18 m while the pulse (spatial) width was intentionally chosen bigger than that. It yielded approximately 5 dB increase in the measured signal compared to the traditional processing approach and an order of magnitude improvement in the sensitivity, ∼ 0.9 μ rad Hz .