2023/03/12 by Mikael Mazur, Mazur, Mikael, Nicolas K. Fontaine +15 · 2 citations
Engineering · #Advanced Fiber Optic Sensors #Electrical Fault Detection and Protection #FOS: Electrical engineering #FOS: Physical sciences #Geophysics (physics.geo-ph) #Integrated Circuits and Semiconductor Failure Analysis #Signal Processing (eess.SP) #electronic engineering #information engineering
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2303.06528
openalex publication_date 2023/03/12 · openalex created_date 2023/03/16 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
In this work we demonstrate an FPGA-based coherent optical frequency domain reflectometry setup for cable monitoring. Using coherent detection for averaging and narrowband filtering, we significantly improve the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) compared to traditional intensity-only techniques while also enabling continuous monitoring of phase and polarization. In addition, the probe signal has constant power, avoiding the nonlinear distortions and thereby enabling continuous use without interfering with data channels. We perform a field demonstration over a trans-oceanic cable using loopback configurations present in each repeater, demonstrating measurement SNR exceeding 30 dB for all about 80 repeaters with an averaging window of 1 second. We furthermore compare cable monitoring using coherent processing to today's solutions using power-only measurements. Our results show how transitioning to coherent technology for cable monitoring can improve sensitivity and enable new types of monitoring, exploring knowledge gained from transitioning from incoherent to coherent data transmission.