BOTDA sensing system employing a tunable low-cost Brillouin fiber ring laser pump-probe source

In this paper we show a Brillouin optical time-domain analysis (BOTDA) sensing system experiment employing a tunable narrow-linewidth dual pump-probe source based on modified Brillouin ring laser technology. The developed cost-effective source generates a tunable pump-locked probe light, with suitable wavelength shift, large tuning range (similar to 200 MHz), narrow linewidth (<2.5 MHz) and adequate power (similar to 0.5 mW). The developed source was hence employed in BOTDA system experiments providing distributed sensing over 10 km single mode optical fiber, and attaining strain and temperature resolutions of 10 mu epsilon and similar to 0.5 degrees C respectively, indicating the pump-probe source as an efficient and cost-effective solution for BOTDA avoiding high-frequency signal generators or complex locking techniques.