Closed-loop technique based on gain balancing for real-time Brillouin optical time-domain analysis

A closed-loop servo control based on balancing the gain of two probing frequencies is proposed for real-time Brillouin optical time-domain analysis (BOTDA) without post-processing. With the most basic BOTDA hardware setup, the system can perform measurement in 150 ms and track a sudden Brillouin frequency shift (BFS) change in excess of 300 MHz (corresponding to a temperature change of more than 250°C) over ∼5 km of fiber with a spatial resolution of 2 m. Moreover, the feedback loop is independent of the loss experienced by the probe and pump, with no requirement on the BFS uniformity along the fiber. All these advantages make the proposed system suitable for field applications in harsh environments.