Resolution enhancement in long pulse OTDR for application in structural health monitoring

To improve the range resolution in inexpensive conventional long pulse optical time domain reflectometer (OTDR) for application in structural health monitoring (SHM) and robotic neural network, the Fourier Wavelet Regularized Deconvolution (ForWaRD) based on the adaptive wavelet method is employed. Since Deconvolution is a noise sensitive process, employing the (ForWaRD) method enhances the signal to noise ratio. Simulation for long pulse OTDR system is done and ForWaRD method is employed to improve the resolution of the OTDR system to the order of several centimeters. In this method the resolution is limited by the bandwidth of detector, bandwidth of electronic circuit, and the sampling rate of analog to digital convertor. (C) 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.