Large Dynamic Range Optical Fiber Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) With Differential-Unwrapping-Integral Algorithm

Optical fiber distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) based on phase sensitive optical time domain reflectometry (ϕ-OTDR) has a great demand in many application fields with large signals, such as railway safety monitoring, cable vibration detection, etc. However, due to the inherent limits of phase unwrapping algorithm, the large signal whose phase change exceeds π cannot be recovered correctly by DAS. In this work, the differential-unwrapping-integral (DUI) algorithm is proposed and demonstrated to replace the traditional unwrapping algorithm for large signal recovery. By utilizing differential operation to compress the signal amplitude, the large phase signal can be converted into small signal which can be recovered through unwrapping. Then, multiple integral operations and polynomial fitting compensation algorithm are applied onto the differential signal to recover the original phase signal without any signal-to-noise ratio(SNR) sacrificed. In theory, the maximum measurable phase of DUI can be improved 1390 times compared with traditional DUI algorithm. Further, the experimental results demonstrate that the dynamic range of DAS with DUI can reach up to 131.7 dB. Moreover, DUI algorithm has been tested and verified in the field test for recording the digging signals with large amplitude. This scheme can be applicable for all phase-demodulation-based sensing techniques without increasing the system complexity.