Pulse compression phase sensitive optical time domain reflectometer with sub-meter resolution

We propose and experimentally demonstrate a pulse compression phase sensitive optical time domain reflectometer (φ-OTDR) with sub-meter resolution. Principle and theoretical analysis on the spatial resolution, the feasibility to obtain the phase information are provided. This technique can break the tradeoff between spatial resolution and measurement range in the traditional φ-OTDR. As example, our verifying experiment achieves 30cm spatial resolution and 20km measurement range, and the signal to noise ratio (SNR) reaches 10dB. To our knowledge, this is the first time that such a high spatial resolution over such a long sensing range is reported in φ-OTDR-based distributed vibration sensing.