338 IEEE PHOTONICS TECHNOLOGY LETTERS, VOL. 26, NO.

4, FEBRUARY 15, 2014

Signal-to-Noise Ratio Improvement in BOTDA

Using Balanced Detection
Alejandro Domínguez-López, Alexia López-Gil, Sonia Martín-López, and Miguel González-Herráez

Abstract— Brillouin optical time domain analysis (BOTDA) In this letter, we propose the use of a well-known detec-
relies typically on the interaction among two counter-propagating tion technique to increase the SNR: the balanced detection.
waves: 1) a pulsed pump wave and 2) a modulated probe This detection procedure has resulted in remarkable improve-
wave. The modulated probe wave has typically two sidebands,
located at ±ν B with respect to the pump frequency. Conventional ments for several methods [5] in other areas of photonics, such
systems detect the time-resolved gain/loss by detecting only the as heterodyne detection [6], optical communications [7], [8] or
upper/lower wavelength sideband. In this letter, we show that biomedical applications [9]. We show that a balanced detection
BOTDA can strongly benefit from the use of balanced detection among the Stokes and anti-Stokes sidebands in a BOTDA
among the two sidebands. In particular, the detected signal can be can allow improving the results obtained over a conventional
doubled while the noise only grows by a factor of (2)1/2 , leading
to a (2)1/2 signal-to noise ratio (SNR) increase. Moreover, any
single-detector option.
common-mode noise in the probe signal path (e.g., master laser
noise, modulator drifts, and so forth) is eliminated, rendering the
system more robust. We validate the principle by experimental II. P RINCIPLES
results that highlight the benefits of the technique in terms of
the SNR.
Stimulated Brillouin Scattering (SBS) features two side
bands: the Stokes (gain) and Anti-Stokes (loss) bands
Index Terms— Brillouin scattering, distributed optic fiber [10], [11]. To take advantage of the SBS phenomenon, a single
sensor, balanced detection, temperature sensor.
sideband (SSB) modulator can be used at the probe signal to
work at Brillouin Gain frequency (Stokes band) or at Brillouin
I. I NTRODUCTION Loss frequency (Anti-Stokes band). However, making use of
a dual sideband (DSB) modulator to generate both Stokes
I N THE past few decades Brillouin-based distributed tem-
perature and strain sensors have attracted the attention of
both the academic and industrial sectors. In particular, BOTDA
and Anti-Stokes bands, the effect of pump depletion can be
effectively mitigated [12]. For this reason, DSB modulation
systems have been lately a trendy study area due to their turns out to be the preferred option in long-range setups. In
numerous and well proofed applications and advantages, such conventional BOTDA, one of the two sidebands (Stokes or
as in monitoring large civil structures, energy transportation anti-Stokes) is filtered in detection and fed into a conventional
or environmental applications. photo-receiver for analysis.
One of the main areas of research in BOTDA sensors In balanced detection, the receiver features two well
focuses on the extension of the measuring range. To do so, matched photodiodes. Two light beams are fed into the corre-
it becomes necessary to increase the signal to noise ratio sponding photodiode and the obtained currents are subtracted.
(SNR) of the sensor, in particular considering the reduced Ultimately, the remaining current difference is amplified
signal contrast at the far end of the fiber. Several techniques through a trans-impedance amplifier. This technique allows
have been applied in order to achieve this goal, such as for the detection of small signal variations over substantial
Raman amplification [1], pulse coding [2] or a combination DC levels. We show in this letter that this technique can be
of both [3]. Chopping techniques have also been proposed used advantageously in BOTDA by performing the balanced
to increase the SNR in Brillouin optical correlation domain detection scheme using the Stokes and Anti-Stokes bands in
analysis [4]. each input diode. In this way, the differential output will be
the result of subtracting the negative input signal (Anti-Stokes
Manuscript received October 7, 2013; revised November 20, 2013; accepted
November 27, 2013. Date of publication December 5, 2013; date of current
band) to the positive input signal (Stokes band).
version January 21, 2014. This work was supported in part by the European For a given position z along the fiber, the signal
Research Council through U-FINE under Grant 307441, in part by the Spanish change recorded in the Stokes band will be proportional to
Ministry of Science and Innovation under Projects TEC2009-14423-C02-01
and TEC2009-14423-C02-02, in part by the INTERREG SUDOE program +g B PP (z)PS (z)z, where g B is the Brillouin gain coefficient,
ECOAL-MGT and in part by the Comunidad de Madrid under Project PP is the pump pulse power, PS is the Stokes wave power and
FACTOTEM-2. The work of S. Martín-López was supported by the Spanish z is the pulse length. Conversely, in the anti-Stokes band,
Ministry of Science and Innovation through a Ramón y Cajal Contract.
The authors are with the Departamento de Electrónica, Universidad the signal change will be proportional to −g B PP (z)PAS (z)z
de Alcalá, Edificio Politécnico, Madrid 28871, Spain (e-mail: alejandro. where PAS is the anti-Stokes power. After the balanced detec-
[email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; tion scheme, the overall signal change will be proportional to
[email protected]).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this letter are available +g B PP (z)(PS (z)+ PAS (z))z. In typical conditions (when an
online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org. external Mach-Zehnder electro-optic modulator is employed),
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/LPT.2013.2293603 PS = PAS , and the detected signal will be naturally doubled
1041-1135 © 2013 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
DOMÍNGUEZ-LÓPEZ et al.: SNR IMPROVEMENT IN BOTDA USING BALANCED DETECTION 339

Fig. 1. Experimental setup of the BOTDA with Balanced Detection. LD: Laser Diode; PC: Polarization controller; EDFA: Erbium Doped Fiber Amplifier;
RF: Radio-frequency generator; VOA: Variable Optical Attenuator; PS: Polarization Scrambler; WDM: Wavelength Division Multiplexer.

in comparison with a single-detector scheme of equal respon- At the pump side, the signal is pulsed using a Semiconduc-
sivity. tor Optical Amplifier (SOA). The SOA allows to shape high
It is interesting now to think what happens in terms of extinction ratio (>30 dB) optical pulses. The pulse widths used
the noise. Considering equal noise characteristics for the in the experiment are 40 ns (which implies that the sensor
two input photodiodes, the use of balanced √ detection will has 4 meter resolution), and the pulse peak power provided
lead to an increase of the noise of only 2 (sum of two is ∼250 mW. After pulsing, the optical signal will be again
independent equally-distributed
√ random variables). Thus, an amplified through an Erbium Doped Fiber Amplifier (EDFA).
overall improvement of 2 in SNR should be expected in The power of the pulses is controlled through a Variable
this configuration over a conventional single-detector option. Optical Attenuator (VOA) and their polarization is scrambled
In addition to the previous discussion, this detection tech- by a fast polarization scrambler. Although this scrambler is
nique has an additional number of advantages: in the first very fast (5 MHz of scrambling rate), the scrambling of the
place, it makes the system strongly robust to common-mode polarization state was imperfect, leading to some polarization
noise sources (noise sources affecting equally both bands). noise in the trace as we will see in the results section.
Common noise sources may include: master laser intensity After going through the fiber and experiencing Brillouin
noise, modulator drifts, varying coupling losses in the fiber, Scattering, the signal is split using a DWDM filter, which will
etc. However, effective common-mode intensity noise can- separate Brillouin Gain band (Stokes) and Brillouin Loss band
cellation will occur solely when optical path lengths for (Anti-Stokes). The filter used is sharp enough to separate both
both sidebands are equal before reaching the detector. In sidebands correctly, attenuating the rejected band in >13 dB.
addition, the use of DC-coupled balanced detection allows for These two different bands are then fed to the positive and
the amplification of the signal to higher values compared to negative ports of the balanced detection system. Ultimately, the
DC-coupled single sideband detection, due to the fact that the Balanced Detection System will provide three different output
DC levels of both independent signals are subtracted previous signals: the Differential Output (with the signal of interest),
to the amplifying stage at the receiver, which means that the and two monitoring outputs, where we will read the DC levels
receiver clamps at a higher value of signal amplitude. of each of the input signals.

III. E XPERIMENTAL S ETUP IV. N ORMALIZATION P ROCESS

To prove the above advantages in a conventional BOTDA, In general, for BOTDA systems the acquired signal is a
we developed the BOTDA scheme represented in Fig. 1. slight amplitude variation upon a significant background DC
It is a variation of the classical BOTDA system [13] but level. To obtain meaningful gain values, it is necessary to
incorporating balanced detection. normalize the obtained signal values by the background DC
As in most BOTDA setups, pump and probe waves are level of the signal, which is a measure of the background
developed from a single distributed feed-back (DFB) laser Stokes (PS ) or anti-Stokes power (PAS ).
diode. A Mach-Zehnder Electro-Optic Modulator (EOM) is In balanced detection, the obtained signal has usually a
used to make a dual sideband with suppressed carrier (DSB- small (close to zero) DC level, as the DC levels of the two
SC) modulation. The extinction ratio of the EOM is >40 dB, photocurrents also get subtracted in the process. Thus, the DC
thus it is possible to nearly eliminate the carrier signal. The level of the Differential Output cannot be used for the nor-
probe power fed into the fiber is ∼330 μW on each sideband. malization. To obtain a correct normalization, it is necessary
The modulating frequency of the EOM is controlled through to monitor the DC levels of the two input signals separately
an RF Generator. The RF frequency is chosen to sweep around and sum them. This is a measure of PS + PAS . With this
the Brillouin Frequency Shift of the fiber under test. value, we can normalize the levels of the Differential Output
340 IEEE PHOTONICS TECHNOLOGY LETTERS, VOL. 26, NO. 4, FEBRUARY 15, 2014

Fig. 2. Amplitude difference from the single sideband detection Fig. 3. Gain profiles at 46.818 km for a frequency sweep between 10.82 GHz
cases (a), (b) and balanced detection (c) for a pump-probe frequency shift and 10.95 GHz. (a) Brillouin Gain sideband (Stokes band) acquired gain
of 10.883 GHz. profile. (b) Brillouin Loss sideband (Anti-Stokes band) acquired gain profile.
(c) Differential output acquired gain profile.

signal. Conventional balanced detectors typically provide these

outputs, so this process is rather straightforward to do with
current off-the-shelf instrumentation.

V. R ESULTS
In this section we illustrate the results obtained with the
BOTDA using the Balanced Detection configuration described
previously. To obtain meaningful comparisons, the measure-
ments have always been carried out with the same scheme,
first using the gain band only (Gain-only measurements), then
the loss band only (Loss-only measurements), and finally the
balanced detection with both gain and loss bands (Balanced
measurements). The same amount of averages is used in all
cases (1024).
The measurements are performed over ∼50 km of single Fig. 4. Brillouin frequency shift for the single sideband acquisition
mode fiber (SMF) with an essentially homogeneous Brillouin cases (a), (b) and the balanced detection acquisition (c) for 50 km of SMF.
frequency shift located at 10.883 GHz at the pump wavelength
(∼1550 nm).
The first remarkable result is that when acquiring in bal- Fig. 4, finding the BFS at any point of the fiber is more
anced mode, the trace amplitude of the Differential Output accurate when balanced detection is employed. The standard
is twice the amplitude of any of the single sidebands, as deviation of the obtained BFS between five consecutive traces
illustrated in Fig. 2. This is an expected result considering the at the very beginning of the fiber (first 5000 points window)
reasoning given in section II. Doubling the trace amplitude is ∼0.618 MHz for both single sidebands acquisitions and
increases the signal contrast by 3 dB, which is potentially ∼0.432 MHz for the balanced √ case. The standard deviation
equivalent
√ to 15 km of fiber. It also leads to a theoretical is improved by a factor of ∼ 2, in consistency with the
2 SNR increase, as shown before. In addition, balanced SNR improvement expected in the balanced case (see [14]
detection increases the robustness of the system to common- for details on the relationship between SNR and frequency
mode noises, which may affect both sidebands. estimation error). At the end of the fiber under test (last
Fig. 3 shows three gain profiles at a distance of 46.818 km, 5000 points window), the standard deviation for the single
with a frequency sweep done from 10.82 GHz to 10.95 GHz. sideband cases is ∼1.232 MHz and, as expected, for the
As it can be inferred, the noise of the differential output gain balanced detection case it √ is ∼0.884 MHz, also resulting in
profile (Fig. 3(c)) is visibly reduced compared to the gain an improvement ratio of ∼ 2. In terms of the figure-of-merit
profiles of the single Brillouin Gain (Fig. 3(a)) and Brillouin discussed by [14], the FOM calculated at the end of the fiber
Loss (Fig. 3(b)) sidebands. is 25.28 for the single sideband detection cases, and raises up
√
Once the frequency sweep is finished, the Brillouin Fre- to 35.24 for the balanced detection case, confirming the ∼ 2
quency Shift (BFS) is obtained by fitting a 2nd order improvement factor.
polynomial curve to the raw gain profile, and then finding A final interesting feature of the balanced detection system
the position of the maximum of the curve. As shown in is that the overall response of the system turns out to be more
DOMÍNGUEZ-LÓPEZ et al.: SNR IMPROVEMENT IN BOTDA USING BALANCED DETECTION 341

and finding the maximum procedure are substantially avoided

in the balanced case, even using raw gain profiles.
The remarkable feature of employing balanced detection is
that the standard deviation of the obtained BFS at the end of
the fiber remains stable (∼0.89 MHz) as the ER is worsened,
showing an improved robustness to the deterioration of this
experimental parameter.

VI. C ONCLUSION
In conclusion, we have presented the application of a well-
known detection technique (balanced detection) to BOTDA
systems. We have shown, both theoretically and experimen-
tally, that remarkable improvements in terms of SNR can be
obtained. In typical conditions, the trace amplitude
√ is doubled
and the SNR is improved by a factor of 2. The system
Fig. 5. Brillouin frequency shift for the single sideband acquisition also features a strong robustness to common mode noise in
cases (a), (b) and the balanced detection acquisition (c) for ∼50 km of SMF
and deteriorating the Extinction Ratio of the SOA (27 dB ER). both sidebands (including master laser noise, modulator drifts,
etc.). Furthermore, we have proven a strong robustness to the
robust to some of the variables of the experiment. One of deterioration of the pump pulse extinction ratio, which might
these important variables to control is the pulse extinction ratio reduce the technical requirements of future experiments.
(ER). As stated previously, the SOA employed is electrically
controlled by a signal generator. In normal conditions, it is
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