Enhancing spatial resolution of BOTDR sensors using image deconvolution.

We propose to employ the image deconvolution technique for Brillouin optical time domain reflectometry (BOTDR) systems to achieve a flexible and enhanced spatial resolution with pump pulses longer than phonon lifetime. By taking the measured Brillouin gain spectrum (BGS) distribution as an image blurred by a point spread function (PSF), the image deconvolution algorithm based on the two-dimensional Wiener filtering can mitigate the ambiguity effect on the Brillouin response. The deconvoluted BGS distribution reveals detailed sensing information within shorter fiber segments, improving the inferior spatial resolution and simultaneously maintaining other sensing performance parameters. Thanks to the proposed technique, a typical BOTDR sensor with 40 ns pump pulses reaches a submetric spatial resolution as high as 10 cm. Compared to the differential-spectrum-based BOTDR retrieving the same spatial resolution, the image deconvolution technique shows advantages in system complexity and measurement uncertainty. Moreover, the proposed technique is promising to improve the spatial resolution of other distributed optical fiber sensing (DOFS) techniques such as BOTDR systems with complex pump modulation methods.