Introducing coherent MIMO sensing, a fading-resilient, polarization-independent approach to ϕ-OTDR

Nowadays, long distance optical fibre transmission systems use polarization diversity multiplexed signals to enhance transmission performance. Distributed acoustic sensors (DAS) use the same propagation medium, i.e., single mode optical fibre, and aim at comparable targets such as covering the highest distance with the best signal quality. In the case of sensors, a noiseless transmission enables us to monitor a large quantity of mechanical events along the fibre. This paper aims at extending the perspectives of DAS systems with regard to technology breakthroughs introduced in long haul transmission systems over the past decade. We recently developed a sensor interrogation method based on coherent phase-sensitive optical time domain reflectometry (ϕ-OTDR), with dual polarization multiplexing at the transmitter and polarization diversity at the receiver. We name this technique coherent-MIMO sensing. A study is performed from a dual-polarization numerical model to compare several sensor interrogation techniques, including coherent-MIMO. We demonstrate that dual-polarization probing of a fibre sensor makes it insensitive to polarization effects, decreases the risks of false alarms and thus strongly enhances its sensitivity. The simulations results are validated with an experiment, and finally quantitative data are given on the performance increase enabled by coherent-MIMO sensing.