Mixing between a reference signal and a data signal is often necessary to extract information about an optical device or network. A probe signal and a reference signal originating from the same source typically mix or interfere, resulting in optical interference “fringes.” A positive fringe occurs when the light is in phase and constructively combines (interferes) to a greater intensity, and a negative fringe occurs when the light is 180 degrees out of phase and destructively combines (interferes) to cancel out the light. The fringe intensities can be detected and used to assess information about the device being probed. In interferometric sensing, a reference signal is mixed with a reflected probe signal whose phase and/or amplitude is modified by a parameter to be measured. The mixing produces an interference signal, and the amplitude of the interference signal depends on how efficiently the two optical signals mix.
Optical Frequency Domain Reflectometry (OFDR) may be used to provide data related to one or more optical characteristics (e.g., backscatter, dispersion, etc.) of a fiber or fiber optic device that is part of a fiber over relatively short fiber distances, e.g., less than several hundred meters, but with relatively high “spatial” resolutions, e.g., centimeters and less. High spatial resolution is valuable for many reasons. For example, it allows more precise location and/or determination of optical characteristic of “events” like fiber flaws, cracks, strains, temperature changes, etc. and devices like couplers, splitters, etc. High resolution also allows performing such operations with a level of precision that distinguishes between events or devices located close together. Without that high resolution, measurements for closely located events or devices cannot be made on an individual event or device level. For these and other reasons, it would be very desirable to apply OFDR to longer fibers in order to attain this high resolution along longer distances.
Unfortunately, there are two major unsolved obstacles to successfully applying OFDR to longer fibers. One is dynamic phase changes caused by time varying changes in the length of the fiber under test. One source of those time-varying changes is vibration. As a fiber vibrates, its length changes causing different time delays in the reflected light traversing those different fiber lengths. For OFDR to work well, the phase of the reflected light along the fiber should be static and not vary with time. If the time variance of the phase occurs slowly relative to the speed with which the interference pattern intensity data is acquired, then the phase changes are not a problem. But if the speed with which the interference pattern intensity data is detected/acquired is slower than the speed at which the phase changes, then the phase changes cannot be ignored.
The speed at which OFDR interference pattern intensity data is acquired is a function of how fast the tunable laser in the OFDR is “swept” over the frequency range of interest and the fiber length. There is a limit on how fast tunable lasers can be swept in terms of bandwidth, amplifier costs, increased power requirements, and processing speed. Regardless of laser sweep speeds, longer fibers require more time to acquire the measurement data, and there is much more of that data. That large amount of data is the second obstacle because there are practical constraints on how much data can be efficiently and cost effectively stored and processed.
To avoid these obstacles, the inventors discovered how to compensate for the time-varying phase caused by vibrations and any other cause so that laser sweep speed and data set size need not be increased. An optical device under test (DUT) is interferometrically measured. The DUT can include one or more of an optical fiber, an optical component, or an optical system. The DUT can be coupled to the measurement system (e.g., an OFDR) via optical fiber, via some other medium, or even via free space. First interference pattern data for the DUT is obtained for a first path to the DUT, and second interference pattern data is obtained for a second somewhat longer path to the DUT. Because of that longer length, the second interference pattern data is delayed in time from the first interference pattern data. A time varying component of the DUT interference pattern data is then identified from the first and second interference pattern data. The identified time varying component is used to modify the first or the second interference pattern data. One or more optical characteristics of the DUT is determined based on the modified interference pattern data. For example, if the DUT includes a fiber having a length greater than 500 meters, the modified interference pattern data may be used to determine one or more optical characteristics at any position along the fiber. Indeed, that position along the fiber may be determined with a resolution, for example, of one or two centimeters based on the modified interference pattern data.
The first and second interference pattern data each include static phase information and dynamic phase information. The time varying component includes the dynamic phase information. The first and second fringe interference pattern data is combined to substantially remove the static phase information. For example, the first or the second interference pattern data can be combined to remove the vibration-induced phase changes that adversely affect the interference pattern data obtained for the DUT.
A preferred, non-limiting, example is implemented as an Optical Frequency Domain Reflectometer (OFDR) to obtain the first interference pattern data and the second interference pattern data. Preferably, the first and second interference pattern data is compensated for non-linearity associated with a tunable laser used in the OFDR to obtain compensated first and second interference pattern data (compensated for the affect on the data due to non-linearities in the laser tuning). One example processing approach that can be used by the OFDR includes the following steps: transforming the first and second interference pattern data into the frequency domain, capturing a first window of frequency domain data for the first interference pattern data corresponding to a portion of the DUT under analysis, capturing a second window of frequency domain data for the second interference pattern data corresponding to the portion of the DUT under analysis, converting the first and second windows of frequency domain data into first and second corresponding phase data, and combining the first and second corresponding phase data.
Other aspects of this technology includes advantageous methods for processing interference pattern data generated by an interferometer. The interferometer provides a laser signal from a tunable laser along a given optical path having an associated path delay and to a reference optical path and combines light reflected from the given optical path and from the reference path, thereby generating the interference pattern data. (The given optical path may be, for example, associated with a device under test (DUT)). A first laser optical phase of the laser signal is estimated, and an expected complex response for the given optical path is calculated based on the estimated laser optical phase. The interference pattern data from the interferometer is multiplied by the expected complex response to generate a product. The product is filtered to extract interference pattern data associated with the given optical path from the interference pattern data generated by the interferometer.
In one non-limiting example implementation, calculating the expected complex response for the given optical path based on the estimated laser optical phase includes estimating a delayed version of the laser optical phase of the laser signal, determining a difference phase between the delayed version of the estimated laser optical phase and the estimated first laser optical phase, calculating the cosine of the difference phase to form the real part of the expected complex response, and calculating the sine of the difference phase to form the imaginary part of the expected complex response. This expected complex response is then multiplied by the interference pattern data. The real and imaginary parts of the resulting complex signals are low pass filtered and decimated to extract interference pattern data associated with the given optical path from the interference pattern data generated by the interferometer. Estimating the laser optical phase includes coupling a portion of the laser light to a second interferometer, converting an interference fringe or pattern signal from the second interferometer into a digital signal corresponding to the interference pattern data, the digital signal being a sampled form of the interference fringe signal, and estimating the laser phase based upon the digital signal.
A first derivative of the laser optical phase may be estimated based on the digital signal by Fourier transforming the digital signal, windowing the transformed signal to identify a portion of the transformed signal that corresponds to the given optical path delay, inverse Fourier transforming the windowed signal, and computing the phase of the signal. Equivalently, a second derivative of the laser optical phase may be estimated by identifying zero crossings of the digital signal and counting a number of samples between the zero crossings of the digital signal. Calculating an expected complex response for the given optical path based on the estimated laser optical phase may be accomplished by estimating a second derivative of the laser optical phase, calculating a running sum of the second derivative of the laser optical phase, where a length of the running sum is associated with a length of the given optical path delay, accumulating the running sum, calculating a sine of the accumulated sum to form the imaginary part of the expected complex response, and calculating a cosine of the accumulated sum to form the real part of the expected complex response. The real and imaginary parts of the expected complex response are low pass filtered and decimated to extract interference pattern data associated with the given optical path from the interference pattern data generated by the interferometer.