Health monitoring of long-haul fiber communication system using chaotic OTDR

A novel chaotic optical time-domain reflectometry (OTDR)-based approach was proposed for monitoring long-haul fiber communication systems with multiple fiber segments. The self-phase modulation and group velocity dispersion effects of the optical cable was considered in demonstrating the proof-of-concept experiment and simulation. In experiments, the correlation peaks are clearly obtained from the correlation trace between the reference and reflected (or scattered) light signals propagating in three optical-fiber segments. The technique affords a high spatial resolution of 2 m, and further long-haul fiber simulations indicate that the sensing distance can be more than 3300 km. Thus, the new proposed technique can be effectively applied for health monitoring of long-haul fiber communication systems.