Dual functionality of wavelength scanning coherent optical time domain reflectometer

Wavelength scanning coherent optical time domain reflectometer (WS-COTDR) is a good candidate to spatially resolve the environmental information at comparatively low frequency. This paper reveals it can also work as a traditional optical time domain reflectometer (OTDR) to identify Fresnel reflection by averaging the obtained signal over the wavelength scanning range. Simultaneous distributed vibration sensing and a traditional OTDR measurement are experimentally demonstrated using the WS-COTDR system.