High spatial resolution, dynamic, and distributed fiber optic strain sensing based on phasorial Brillouin dynamic gratings reflectometry

We present a novel fiber-optic sensing technique based on the distributed measurement of Brillouin-induced phase-shift in the reflection from Brillouin dynamic gratings in polarization-maintaining fibers. Subject to signal to noise considerations, the strain sensitivity of the phase-shift in the reflection of a pulsed probe, orthogonally polarized to the gratings-generating pumps, is independent of the pulse width, suggesting the potential to achieve higher spatial resolutions than those offered by slope-assisted, phasorial Brillouin sensing techniques in standard single-mode fibers. We report the measurement of 500Hz strain vibrations (at a sampling rate of 1MHz) with a spatial resolution of 20cm.