Distributed Brillouin Sensing With Centimeter-Order Spatial Resolution in Polymer Optical Fibers

We present the first demonstration of distributed strain/temperature sensing with a high spatial resolution in plastic optical fibers (POFs) based on Brillouin optical correlation-domain reflectometry. A 50-cm-long strain-applied (or heated) POF section is clearly detected with a theoretical spatial resolution of 34 cm, a high sampling rate of 3.3 Hz (per measured point), and a high signal-to-noise ratio. A 10-cm-long heated POF section is also successfully detected with a theoretical resolution of 7.4 cm. The performance limitation of this system is then discussed.