Cost-effective laser source for phase-OTDR vibration sensing

Self-injection locking, an efficient method to improve the spectral performance of semiconductor lasers without active stabilization, has already demonstrated its high potential for operation with single-longitude-mode fiber lasers. Recently, we have demonstrated significant line-narrowing (more than 1000 times) of the conventional low-cost DFB laser locked to an external fiber optic ring resonator. However, dynamical behavior of such a laser exhibits mode-hopping making its applications for distributed acoustic sensing rather questionable. In order to explore capacity of the injection locked laser for a phase-OTDR, we have designed a simple configuration of the injection locking DFB laser and applied it for detection and localization of perturbations with a phase-OTDR based distributed vibration sensor. The conventional DFB laser locked at critical coupling regime through fiber optic ring resonator of 3.75 m length (Free Spectral Range is 54.5 MHz) delivers CW mode-hoping free radiation with a linewidth of about ~5.0 kHz, i.e. ~200 times narrower than the linewidth of free-running laser. In combination with the moving differential processing algorithm such a laser is capable to provide high SNR distributed measurements of vibrations and dynamic strain perturbations. The fiber under test comprises three sections of standard single mode fiber, with a total length of ~4.5 km. Perturbations have been locally implemented into the test fiber at two positions using a shaker and a piezoelectric stretcher, respectively. In the first case, perturbations of the fiber induced by the shaker at a frequency of 815 Hz have been recognized as a peak in the recorded and processed traces with a signalto- noise ratio (SNR) of 12 dB over a 10 m resolution cell. In the second case, dynamical strain induced by the fiber stretcher over 40 m at a frequency of 3 kHz is shown in a similar pronounced peak with a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of 11 dB. These signatures are similar to the results obtained with a commercial 1 kHz linewidth laser employed with the same phase- OTDR setup. We believe that proposed solution could be a basis for development of a cost-effective phase-sensitive OTDR for distributed sensing specified for the distance up to tens of kilometers.