Accurate estimation of Brillouin frequency shift in Brillouin optical time domain analysis sensors using cross correlation

Current methods of estimating the Brillouin frequency shift in Brillouin optical time domain analysis sensors are based on curve-fitting techniques. These techniques apply the same weight to all portions of the curve and dutifully fit into the peak and noisy ends of the curve. This makes them very sensitive to noise, initialization of fitting parameters, symmetry, and start and stop frequencies. We introduce a method based on the cross-correlation technique to estimate the central frequency of noisy Lorentzian curves, which is more robust to noise and free from initial settings of fitting parameters. (C) 2011 Optical Society of America