Enhanced Backscattering Optical Fiber Distributed Sensors: Tutorial and Review

Optical Backscatter Reflectometry (OBR) is an advanced distributed sensing technique that makes use of optical fibers to detect and localize physical parameters, with spatial resolution below the millimeter. By tailoring the Rayleigh scattering properties of optical fibers, enhancing the backscattering contents, we can create 2 and 3-dimensional sensing networks that can extend OBR to multi-dimensional sensing, and even to biosensing. In this work, we provide a tutorial on distributed optical fiber sensors with enhanced backscattering, and on how to design sensing networks with these fibers; we also review the main applications and emerging topics.