Frequency-comb enabled spectrum-correlation reflectometry for distributed fiber-optic sensing

Abstract Distributed fiber-optic sensing has become an indispensable tool for large-scale structural and environmental monitoring, where spectral interrogation of backscattering light enables high-precision quantitative measurement of external perturbations. Conventional spectral analysis methods, typically based on frequency-domain serial interrogation or time-to-frequency mapping, face inherent trade-offs between measurement speed, dynamic strain measurement range, and system complexity. Here, we present a distributed frequency comb enabled spectrum-correlation reflectometry as a universal spectral analysis framework that leverages optical frequency comb for parallel multi-frequency interrogation, which is experimentally demonstrated in a phase-sensitive optical time-domain reflectometry (φ-OTDR) system. This method eliminates the need for large frequency scans, achieving more than tenfold improvement in measurement speed over the state-of-the-art spectral analysis methods. Compared to existing phase-demodulated φ-OTDR systems, this method enables vibration amplitude monitoring with a dynamic strain measurement range expanded by more than an order of magnitude, while intrinsically circumventing phase unwrapping issues and interference fading. This work establishes a new paradigm for distributed spectral analysis, providing a flexible and robust platform for a wide range of sensing technologies, including Rayleigh and Brillouin-based schemes, which may have significant impact for geophysics, seismology, civil engineering, and other fields.