Abstract: Aspects of the present disclosure are directed to laser interferometric systems, methods, and structures exhibiting superior laser phase noise tolerance particularly in seismic detection applications wherein laser requirements are advantageously relaxed by employing a novel configuration wherein the same laser which generates an outgoing signal is coherently detected using the same laser as local oscillator and fiber turnarounds are employed that result in the cancellation and/or mitigation of undesired mechanical vibration.

Abstract: Aspects of the present disclosure are directed to alternative repeater design(s) that advantageously improve signal-to-noise of distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) systems using coherent detection of Rayleigh backscatter in multi-span links including inline amplification that may be employed—for example—in undersea submarine systems. The repeater designs incorporate Rayleigh combine units (RCU) and Rayleigh drop units (RDU) to reduce Rayleigh backscatter loss as Rayleigh signal(s) is/are routed to a link that propagates the backscatter signal in an opposite direction relative to interrogation pulse(s).

Abstract: Aspects of the present disclosure describe distributed fiber optic sensing (DFOS)/distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) systems, methods, and structures that advantageously employ chirped interrogation pulses (sensing signals) that exhibit a smooth amplitude profile produced by appending leading and trailing edges of the sensing signals with out-of-band chirps. By appending leading and trailing out-of-band signals to a chirped pulse sensing signal to produce a “smooth” amplitude profile a coexistence of sensing and telecommunications signals on a same optical fiber is facilitated.

Abstract: Aspects of the present disclosure describe distributed fiber optic sensing (DFOS) systems, methods, and structures that advantageously provide DFOS and WDM communications over amplified, multi-span optical WDM optical telecommunications facilities using all Raman amplification and coding schemes. Our all-Raman amplification operates stably—without isolators—and provides sufficient gain to compensate for fiber span loss for both DFOS signals and WDM channel signals—at the same time. Furthermore, our inventive techniques employ signal coding, such as MB-TGD-OFDR for DAS, and we operate our DFOS operation power at a much lower power level as compared to pulse interrogation techniques. With improved OSNR and reduced power using signal coding along with our distributed Raman amplification, our DFOS systems can co-exist with WDM communication channels on the same amplified multi-span fiber optic links over great distances.

Abstract: A spatial averaging method for a coherent distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) system that employs differential beating and polarization combining of signals for two locations along a length of optical sensing fiber to determine phase change in-between every location along the length of the optical sensing fiber and a moving average using polarization combining output to reduce any Rayleigh fading before phase determination.

Abstract: A distributed optical fiber sensing (DOFS)/distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) method employing polarization diversity combining and spatial diversity combining for a DOFS/DAS system wherein the polarization diversity combining determines a temporal average product for each beating product, determines one having a max average power, rotates that one having max average power for its phase shift to produce a reference, determines a phase difference for each beating product as compared to the reference, compensates any phase difference such that all beating products exhibit a well-aligned phase; and combining the beating products; and wherein the spatial diversity combining uses the combined beating products for each location, determines a temporal average power, determines a location having a greatest average power; and combines the results and provides an indicia of the combined result(s).

Abstract: Aspects of the present disclosure directed to frequency drift compensation for coded-DAS systems that use chirped pulses as a probe signal. Our inventive approach estimates timing jitter by correlating the amplitude of the estimated Rayleigh impulse response of every frame with a reference frame, and then re-aligns each frame by the estimated timing jitter. As the amount of timing jitter varies within a frame, every frame is divided into blocks where all samples have similar timing jitter, and perform timing jitter estimation and compensation on a block-by-block, frame-by-frame basis using an overlap-and-save method. Tracking of a slowly changing channel is enabled by allowing the reference frame to be periodically updated.

Abstract: Aspects of the present disclosure describe distributed fiber optic sensing (DFOS) systems, methods, and structures that advantageously sense/monitor intra-data center operations using self-coherent detection. Advantageously, sensing signal(s) and data signal(s) are optically multiplexed such that the sensing signal(s) are generated and detected using the same optoelectronic components as data generation and detection while requiring only minimal changes to transponder arrangements and no additional bandwidth to digital-to-analog converters (DAC) or analog-to-digital converters (ADC).

Abstract: Aspects of the present disclosure describe distributed fiber optic sensing (DFOS)/distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) systems, methods, and structures exhibiting a sensitivity enhancement via MIMO sampling and phase recombination.

Abstract: Aspects of the present disclosure describe Rayleigh fading mitigation via short pulse coherent distributed acoustic sensing with multi-location beating-term combination. In illustrative configurations, systems, methods, and structures according to the present disclosure employ a two stage modulation arrangement providing short interrogator pulses resulting in a greater number of sensing data points and reduced effective sectional length. The increased number of data points are used to mitigate Rayleigh fading via a spatial combining process, multi-location-beating combining (MLBC) which uses weighted complex-valued DAS beating results from neighboring locations and aligns phase signals of each of the locations, before combining them to produce a final DAS phase measurement. Since Rayleigh scattering is a random statistic, the MLBC process allows capture of different statics from neighboring locations with correlated vibration/acoustic signal.

Abstract: Systems, methods, and structures that provide distributed acoustic sensing using chirped optical pulses of selectable duration and bandwidth, at a frame rate limited by a round-trip propagation time of a fiber under test. Instead of processing a transmitted chirped pulse as a single sequence—our systems, methods, and structures employ a parallel fragmented multiband architecture, where each tributary correlates the received signal with a truncated chirped pulse to obtain the Rayleigh impulse response over its frequency band. By reducing the duration of the chirp processed by each tributary, spatial leakage is reduced at all the tributaries, thus even after combining all the interferometric products from all tributaries using a rotated vector sum, the resultant signal is much less impacted by spatial leakage than by using a conventional TGD-OFDR method.

Abstract: Earthquake detection via fiber sensing is provided using using a supervisory path of submarine cables wherein the supervisory system/path of a submarine optical cable conveys portion(s) of an optical signal back to an origin location periodically—i.e., at every repeater location. Advantageously, since it is known where a returning signal is coming from, a resolution equivalent to an undersea span length may be determined—which is sufficient for wide area disturbances such as earthquakes. The returned signal is sufficiently strong such that the signal-to-noise ratio of a returned/received signal is not limited by the ASE noise of the amplifiers. The returned signal is much larger as compared to a normal distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) return signal since the return signal according to aspects of the present disclosure is directed backward via an optical coupler/reflector/circulator having a much larger coupling ratio as compared to normal Rayleigh back scattering utilized in DAS.

Abstract: Aspects of the present disclosure describe systems and methods that advantageously enable vibration-induced optical phase measurement at a centralized optical line terminal (OLT) in a PON architecture. In sharp contrast to existing distributed fiber sensing systems and methods, the optical phase measurements of the present disclosure do not rely on back scattering mechanisms and maintain a sufficient optical signal to noise ratio (OSNR) even after round-trip splitting loss in the PON.

Abstract: Aspects of the present disclosure describe systems, methods and structures providing bidirectional optical fiber communication and sensing using the same fiber transmission band and bidirectional WDM fiber sharing such that communications channels and optical fiber sensing channel(s) coexist on the same fiber. As a result, nonlinear interaction between communications channels and interrogating pulse(s) of sensing are much reduced or eliminated.

Abstract: Systems and methods for predicting performance of a modulation system are provided. A neural network model is trained using performance information of a source system. The neural network model is modified with transferable knowledge about a target system to be evaluated. The neural network model is tuned using specific characteristics of the target system to create a source-based target model. The target system performance is evaluated using the source-based target model to predict system performance of the target system.

Abstract: Aspects of the present disclosure describe systems, methods. and structures for vibration detection using phase recovered from an optical transponder with coherent detection. Advantageously, our systems, methods, and structures leverage contemporary digital coherent receiver architecture in which various adaptive DSP operations performed to recover transmitted data track optical phase. The phase is extracted at low overhead cost, allowing a digital coherent transponder to perform vibration detection/monitoring as an auxiliary function to data transmission. Demonstration of vibration detection and localization based on the extraction of optical phase from payload-carrying telecommunications signal using a coherent receiver in a bidirectional WDM transmission system is shown and described.

Abstract: An optical fiber sensing system with reduced spatial resolution and noise for multiple applications and method of operating same that employs a coherent receiver configured to detect and digitize both I and Q signals in two polarizations and performs signal beating in a digital signal processor (DSP) using the polarization-diverse signals to obtain beating results for multiple polarization state pairs that effectively reduces polarization induced fading effect(s) while providing faster sensing speed(s) and more efficient filtering. Since Rayleigh signals are captured in two orthogonal polarizations, four beating products are determined at once in the DSP and all are used for fiber strain determination thereby avoiding polarization fading.

Abstract: Aspects of the present disclosure describe systems, methods and apparatus for improving the performance of Rayleigh-based phase-OTDR with correlation-based diversity combining and bias removal.

Abstract: Aspects of the present disclosure describe systems, methods and structures for coherent distributed sensing that employs a moving average method among locations along a sensing fiber employing a user configured number of taps that involves location grouping and a group's internal phase alignment followed by an inter-group phase alignment and combining. Our method employs two steps of rotation to achieve the alignment: intra-group rotation and inter-group rotation to align the phase of all participating sensing fiber locations.

Abstract: Aspects of the present disclosure describe multi-frequency coherent distributed acoustic sensing with a single transmitter/receiver pair using an offset Tx/Rx framing scheme and an additional optical IQ modulator to generate the multiple frequency channels for DAS interrogation.