Energy Recycling From Distributed Fiber-Optic Sensors

Distributed fiber-optic sensors (DFOS) have been widely deployed in a wide range of applications. The operational principle of such DFOS typically relies on monitoring light backscattered due to pumping optical pulses in an optical fiber. Once the DFOS’ optical pump pulses reach the distal end of the optical fiber, the power carried by each pulse is conventionally wasted and dissipated to the medium surrounding the fiber without a benefit. Here, we report on energy harvesting from the DFOS’ optical pulses to recycle the wasted optical power for electric-consuming devices supply. We demonstrated the feasibility of this concept by harvesting energy from a fiber-optic distributed acoustic sensor (DAS) and a distributed temperature sensor (DTS). The study further investigates the impact of changing the pulse repetition rate within the 5–25 kHz range on the harvested power. Without any disturbances in the DFOS functionalities, power values of up to 0.871 mW were harvested as a proof-of-concept demonstration.