Generation of high performance optical chirped pulse for distributed strain sensing application with high strain accuracy and larger measurement range

Abstract

A photonic approach for generating low frequency drifting noise, arbitrary and large frequency chirping rate (FCR) optical pulses based on the Kerr effect in the nonlinear optical fiber is theoretically analyzed and experimentally demonstrated. Due to the Kerr effect-induced sinusoidal phase modulation in the nonlinear fiber, high order Kerr pulse with a large chirping rate is generated. In the concept-proof experiments, the FCR of the mth Kerr pulse has been significantly improved by a factor of 2m+1. In addition, dynamic strain measurement along with a random fiber grating array (RFGA) sensor by using different order Kerr pulse is carried out for demonstrating a large strain measurement range with lower uncertainty sensing capability. Benefiting from the use of a single laser source and large FCR Kerr pulse, the system exhibits a 3.9 µɛ static strain measurable range, 0.24 µɛ measurement uncertainty by using −4th order Kerr pulse that has an FCR up to 0.8 GHz/ns. Note that the FCR of the chirped pulse could be further enhanced by using larger FCR chirped pulse seed or choosing higher order Kerr pulses.