Analysis of bandwidth-reduced local oscillator in Brillouin optical time domain reflectometry

A local oscillator for coherent detection of backward Brillouin scattering in Brillouin optical time domain reflectometry (BOTDR) has been analyzed. A ring Brillouin fiber laser, whose Brillouin gain media is 70m high-nonlinear-fiber (HNLF), is used as local oscillator of coherent detection. The BFL operates at 1549.06nm red-shifted 0.084nm from the pump laser. As to Brillouin light, The detection frequency is reduced from ∼11GHz of direct detection to ∼420MHz of heterodyne detection in this paper. Self-lasing cavity-modes of BFL impose the “burr” intervalled at 2.5MHz on the frequency domain analysis of the beat-frequency siganl. Signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of beat-frequency signal decreases greatly, resulting to Lorentzian fitting with error. By adjusting variable optical attenuator (VOA) to increase the cavity loss in the fiber ring cavity, the self-lasing cavity-modes will be eliminated and a stable Brillouin laser will be obtained. The frequency estimation accuracy is improved greatly.