Brillouin backscattering analysis in recent generation of telecom optical fibers

This paper reports on examination of the latest generation of telecom optical fibers for the Brillouin backscattering strain sensor application. Over 30 fibers from 5 different manufactures have been tested in terms of their ability to create a stable and accurate strain sensor. It has been proved that fibers that belong to the same standard, according to ITU-T (International Telecommunication Union), and even if provided by one manufacturer, demonstrate fundamentally different Brillouin backscattering response. It has been shown that unimodal Brillouin spectrum cannot be treated as the main parameter for fiber selection. In order to achieve accurate and reproducible results of strain measurement, it is necessary to perform initial examination of the fibers over the range of laser pulse width.