Brillouin Scattering Based Distributed Sensors for Structural Applications

Over the past four years the Fibre Optics Group at the University of New Brunswick has been developing a distributed sensor for use in smart civil structures. By using Brillouin loss, the sensor is capable of measuring strain or temperature at any region on a sensing fibre, even those that are kilometers in length. This paper outlines the development of the sensor system, and discusses some of the experiments that have been performed with it. New results are presented that demonstrate 100 mm spatial resolution under laboratory conditions. This represents a four-fold improvement in the spatial resolution over previously reported results attained with a Brillouin scattering based distributed sensor.