Distributed Brillouin fiber sensing based on spectrum line fitting and wavelet packet denoising

A novel signal processing method is proposed to improve the spatial resolution, frequency resolution and dynamic characteristics of BOTDR. For the BOTDR system with 50 ns pump pulse, by using spectrum line fitting technology based on Levenberg–Marquardt (LM) algorithm, the spatial resolution is improved from 5 m to 5 cm. Combination of LM fitting algorithm, a large frequency scanning interval is adopted without sacrificing measurement accuracy of the BOTDR system. It reduces the number of sampling points of Brillouin spectrum significantly. So, the fitting speed is improved greatly. This is the first time using a large scan interval to increase the spectrum line fitting speed. To improve the fitting speed, the difference between the reference and measured spectrum is used to estimate the variation of Brillouin frequency shift. The measured amplitude of Brillouin spectrum is used to estimate the width of region strain occurred. Finally, by using wavelet packet denoising technology, the spectra containing noise are fitted successfully.