Reconstruction technique for stimulated Brillouin scattering distributed fiber-optic sensors

A novel numerical technique for temperature/strain profiles reconstruction based on Brillouin optical-fiber time-domain analysis (BOTDA) sensors is proposed. In this approach, we search directly for the temperature/strain profile along the fiber that matches the measured data. The algorithm is based on a harmonic expansion of the unknown profile, whose coefficients are determined by a multidimensional minimization. Several numerical simulations, even in presence of noise, prove the capability of the proposed algorithm to compensate for some systematic errors suffered by classical approaches based on the direct reading of Brillouin power spectra. (C) 2002 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers.