title: Grating-assisted polarization optical time-domain reflectometry for distributed fiber-optic sensing.
abstract: We report a novel type of polarization optical time-domain reflectometry (POTDR) for fully distributed fiber-optic sensing, in which the reflected optical signal is from a series of fiber Bragg gratings that are uniformly distributed along the fiber. Compared with a conventional POTDR that uses the Rayleigh backscattering, this grating-assisted POTDR can have a much better signal-to-noise ratio and consequently a better measurement resolution and a larger measurement range of the fiber birefringence. Experimental results have shown that the measurement resolution of the grating-assisted POTDR is almost an order of magnitude better than that of a conventional POTDR.
authors.affiliation: Center for Photonics Technology. Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, Virginia 24061-0111, USA. mhan@vt.edu
authors.forename: Ming
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Han
authors.forename: Yunjing
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Anbo
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Wang