Performance comparison of Raman/erbium-doped-fiber hybrid-amplification-based long-distance fiber Bragg grating sensor systems

A study regarding the performance comparison of three different types of long-distance fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensors based on bidirectional Raman and erbium-doped fiber (EDF) amplification has been carried out to determine the most power-efficient and accurate configuration. The three sensor system configurations studied were a bidirectional hybrid Raman amplifier with (Type I) an EDF located after the distributed Raman amplification section, (Type II) an EDF located before the distributed Raman amplification section, and (Type III) without an EDF. The FBG sensor systems are based on a demodulation scheme employing radio frequency power measurements of a beat signal, in which a sine-modulated amplified spontaneous emission from a directly modulated reflective semiconductor optical amplifier is employed as a broadband light source. The results of our experimentation showed that the sensor system with the EDF located prior to the Raman amplification section provided the best performance in regards to its pump power efficiency, electrical signal-to-noise ratio, and measurement accuracy. (C) 2012 Optical Society of America