Nonlinearity-compensation-free optical frequency domain reflectometry based on electrically-controlled optical frequency sweep

A nonlinearity-compensation-free optical frequency domain reflectometry (OFDR) scheme is proposed and experimentally demonstrated based on the electrically-controlled optical frequency sweep. In the proposed scheme, the linear frequency sweep light is generated by propagating an ultra-narrow-linewidth continuous-wave (CW) light through an electro-optic frequency shifter which consists of a dual-parallel Mach-Zehnder modulator (DPMZM) and an electronic 90° hybrid, where the electro-optic frequency shifter is driven by a linear frequency modulated signal generated by a direct digital synthesizer (DDS). Experimental results show that the spatial resolution and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the proposed OFDR scheme without the nonlinear phase compensation are comparable to those of OFDR employing a commercial tunable laser source (TLS), an auxiliary interferometer, and a software-based nonlinear phase compensation method. The proposed OFDR scheme is helpful to reduce the complexity of the optical structure and eliminate the difficulty of developing the nonlinear phase compensation algorithm.