Until now, non-local effects in dual-probe-sideband Brillouin Optical Time Domain Analysis (BOTDA) systems have been considered negligible if the probe power is below the Stimulated Brillouin Scattering (SBS) threshold. In this paper, we show the appearance of non-local effects even below the SBS threshold. The pump pulse experiences a frequency dependent spectral deformation that affects the readout process differently in the gain and loss configurations. The main conclusion of our study is that the measurements in gain configuration are more robust to this non-local effect than the loss configuration. These results are of particular interest for manufacturers of long-range BOTDA systems.

Date Published: 28 September 2015
PDF: 4 pages
Proc. SPIE 9634, 24th International Conference on Optical Fibre Sensors, 963430 (28 September 2015);

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 9634:
24th International Conference on Optical Fibre Sensors
Hypolito José Kalinowski; José Luís Fabris; Wojtek J. Bock, Editor(s)