HIBISCUS: high sensitivity stimulated brillouin scattering sensors

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This proposal is on increasing the distributed temperature and strain sensing (DTS) capability of optical fiber sensors by at least an order of magnitude using a novel stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) scheme for the first time. This technology, which is the subject of a filed patent, has three aims: 1. To enhance the true sensitivity of DTS, 2) reduce the cost of DTS and 3) to demonstrate a prototype based on SBS. The Brillouin frequency shift is a weak function of temperature and strain. By using higher order stimulated Brillouin scattering, we have recently shown that the Nth. order Stokes wave has N x the frequency shift of the 1st order Stokes shift. We aim to combine well established optical techniques to convert our current non-distributed sensing scheme into a powerful high sensitivity and high spatial resolution scheme. Our approach is based on comparative sensing, which compensates drift, inevitable in such DTS systems. Sensing over km long distances is anticipated with << 0.5m sensitivity with a resolution of sub-degree C.