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Updated: May 10, 2026
High Speed Sub-GHz Spectrometer for Brillouin Scattering Analysis
Published on: December 22, 2015
Effect of pulse depletion in a Brillouin optical time-domain analysis system
Luc Thévenaz1, Stella Foaleng Mafang, Jie Lin
1EPFL Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Group for Fibre Optics, Institute of Electrical Engineering, SCI-STILT Station11, CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland. Luc.Thevenaz@EPFL.CH
Abstract:
Energy transfer between the interacting waves in a distributed Brillouin sensor can result in a distorted measurement of the local Brillouin gain spectrum, leading to systematic errors. It is demonstrated that this depletion effect can be precisely modelled. This has been validated by experimental tests in an excellent quantitative agreement. Strict guidelines can be enunciated from the model to make the impact of depletion negligible, for any type and any length of fiber.
