Datei für die Öffentlichkeit verfügbar ("Open Access")
A novel distributed acoustic sensing technique is proposed that exploits both phase and amplitude of the Rayleigh backscattered light to quantify the environmental variation. The system employs a wavelength-scanning laser and an imbalanced Mach-Zehnder interferometer to acquire the reflection spectra and the phase of the detected light, respectively. Fading-free and low-frequency measurements are realized via the crosscorrelation of the reflection spectra. The discrete crosscorrelation is used to circumvent the nonlinear frequency sweeping of the laser. Based on the phase of the backscattered light, it is possible to quantify fast environmental variations. The whole system requires no hardware modification of the existing system and its functionality is experimentally validated. The proposed system has the potential to monitor ground motion/movement at very low frequency band like subsidence around mining areas and at high frequency band like earthquakes and vibrations induced by avalanches.
Phase-sensitive optical time-domain reflectometry (jOTDR) is a technology for distributed vibration sensing, where vibration amplitudes are determined by recovering the phase of the backscattered light. Measurement noise induces phase errors, which degrades sensing performance. The phase errors, using a differentiation and cross-multiplication (DCM) algorithm, are investigated theoretically and experimentally in a jOTDR system based on a phase retrieval configuration consisting of an imbalanced Mach–Zehnder interferometer (IMZI) and a 3 x 3 coupler. Analysis shows that phase error is highly dependent on the AC component of the obtained signal, essentially being inversely proportional to the product of the power of the light backscattered from two locations. An analytical expression was derived to estimate the phase error and was confirmed by experiment. When applied to the same measurement data, the error is found to be slightly smaller than that obtained using in-phase/quadrature (I/Q) demodulation. The error, however, increases for longer measurement times.
Application of Intensity-Based Coherent Optical Time Domain Reflectometry to Bridge Monitoring
(2022)
Although distributed fiber sensing techniques have been widely used in structural health monitoring, the measurement results of bridge monitoring, particularly under destructive testing, have rarely been reported. To the best of our knowledge, this paper is the first report of distributed vibration measurement results, which we obtained during a three-day destructive test on an abolished bridge. A coherent optical time domain reflectometry (COTDR) was used to acquire the vibration information while the bridge was being sawed. The obtained signal was analyzed in time and frequency domain. Some characteristics of the sawing-induced vibration were retrieved by the short-time Fourier transform; the vibration exhibited several high frequency components within the measured range up to 20 kHz and all the components appeared in the same time slot. Some unexpected signals were also detected. Thorough analysis showed that they are quite different from the sawing-induced vibration and are believed to originate from internal damage to the bridge (probably the occurrence of cracks).
Phase-sensitive optical time domain reflectometry becomes an effective tool to realize distributed sensing, and the optical phase of the received light is usually used to quantify the strain for both dynamic and static measurement. The analysis on the overall phase error has been improved by considering the proportionality of the detection noise to the local optical power. The estimation accuracy is greatly improved by using the proposed theory, the probability density of the estimation accuracy over 99% is > 0.6, ∼39 times larger than the previously reported method. The phase unwrapping may malfunction due to the noisy signal, causing large phase errors. Point break detection algorithms are used to locate the incorrect phase unwrapping points, so the temporal evolution of the phase retrieved at each position can be divided into several sections with different offset. The phase unwrapping error is then suppressed by removing the offset.
We present a preliminary investigation on distributed humidity monitoring during the drying process of concrete based on an embedded polymer optical fiber (POF). The water dissipated into the POF changes several properties of the fiber such as refractive index, scattering coefficient and attenuation factor, which eventually alters the Rayleigh backscattered light. The optical time Domain reflectometer (OTDR) technique is performed to acquire the backscattered signal at the wavelengths 650 nm and 500 nm, respectively. Experimental results show that the received signal increases at 650 nm while the fiber attenuation factor clearly increases at 500 nm, as the concrete dries out. In the hygroscopic range, the information retrieved from the signal change at 650 nm agrees well with the measurement result of the electrical humidity sensors also embedded in the concrete sample.
A Kramers-Kronig (KK) receiver is applied to a phase-sensitive optical time domain reflectometry based on direct detection. An imbalanced Mach-Zehnder interferometer with a 2× 2 coupler is used in sensing system to encode the phase information into optical intensity. The directly obtained signal is treated as the in-phase component, and the KK receiver provides the quadrature component by Hilbert transform of the obtained signal, so that the optical phase can be retrieved by IQ demodulation. The working principle is well explained, and the obtained phase variance is theoretically analyzed. The experiment demonstrates the functionality of the sensor and validates the theoretical analysis.