Online distributed strain measurement of fiber Michelson hydrophones based on DPP-BOTDA with a pulsed-probe wave

We propose and demonstrate a novel differential pulse-width pair Brillouin optical time domain analysis (DPP-BOTDA) system with a pulsed-probe wave for online distributed strain measurement of fiber Michelson hydrophones (FMHs). Different from the conventional DPP-BOTDA using a continuous probe wave, a pulsed-probe wave is used in our scheme to avoid the interferences between the reflected lights from the sensor arm and reference arm of the FMH, where the probe pulse width should be adjusting precisely equal to the time delay between the two arms. The Brillouin frequency shift (BFS) containing the strain and/or temperature information is measured by sweeping the frequency difference of the probe pulse and the pump pulse. In the experiment, an optimized 8/8.5 ns pump pulse pair is applied to realize a 5-cm spatial resolution, and the probe pulses of 624.5 ns and 1269 ns are applied to measure the strain distribution of the sensor arms of two FMHs. We have successfully measured the temperature-induced strain of a FMH with an arm length difference of 62.45 m as temperature increases from −40°C to 80°C and the distributed strain variation of the other FMH with the arm length difference of 126.91 m as the hydrostatic pressure increases from 0.1 MPa to 10 MPa. The results indicate that the proposed scheme can provide a desirable solution for online distributed strain measurement of the FMHs.