A Long Distance Phase-Sensitive Optical Time Domain Reflectometer with Simple Structure and High Locating Accuracy

A phase-sensitive optical time domain reflectometer (Φ-OTDR) can be used for pipeline security. However, the sensing distance (less than 20 km) of traditional Φ-OTDR is too short for the needs of typical oil and gas pipeline monitoring applications (30–50 km). A simple structure Φ-OTDR system utilizing long pulse, balanced amplified detector and heterodyne detection is proposed in this paper and the sensing range is thereby increased to 60 km. Through analyzing the sensing principle of Φ-OTDR, a novel locating strategy is proposed to maintain the locating accuracy at a few meters when a long pulse (5 µs) is used. The increased pulse width deteriorates the time series of each sensing point seriously. In order to eliminate the deterioration, a data processing technique combining wavelet and empirical mode decomposition is applied in this system. The experiment results show that the sensing distance can be increased to 60 km and the locating accuracy is maintained at 6.8 m.