Range extension for optical fiber sensing systems
AssigneesSilixa Ltd., Chevron U.S.A. Inc.
InventorsTom Parker, Mahmoud Farhadiroushan, Arran Gillies
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Abstract
An optical fiber sensing system includes a sensing optical fiber and one or more optical amplifiers in series with the sensing fiber and arranged to increase the power of sensing pulses travelling along the fiber to thereby increase the range of the sensing system. The optical fiber sensing system is one selected from the group including an optical fiber distributed acoustic sensor (DAS), an optical fiber distributed temperature sensor (DTS), or an optical time domain reflectometry (OTDR) system.
Claims17
An optical fiber distributed acoustic sensor (DAS) sensing system, comprising:
- a sensing optical fiber;
- one or more optical amplifiers in series with the sensing fiber, such that each of the one or more optical amplifiers is located in series between two respective sensing fiber portions, and arranged to increase the power of sensing pulses travelling along the fiber to thereby increase the range of the sensing system;
- and
- optical amplifier bypass optical componentry arranged to permit optical backscatter and/or reflections from along the sensing fiber to bypass the one or more optical amplifiers.
An optical fiber distributed acoustic sensor (DAS) sensing system, comprising:
- a sensing optical fiber;
- one or more optical amplifiers in series with the sensing fiber, such that each of the one or more optical amplifiers is located in series between two respective sensing fiber portions, and arranged to increase the power of sensing pulses travelling along the fiber to thereby increase the range of the sensing system;
- and
- pulse conditioning componentry arranged to condition sensing pulses travelling along the fiber,
- wherein the pulse conditioning componentry includes signal regeneration componentry arranged to receive an incoming optical pulse and re-generate it with an intended optical pulse signal envelope.
An optical fiber distributed acoustic sensor (DAS) sensing system, comprising:
- a sensing optical fiber;
- one or more optical amplifiers in series with the sensing fiber, such that each of the one or more optical amplifiers is located in series between two respective sensing fiber portions, and arranged to increase the power of sensing pulses travelling along the fiber to thereby increase the range of the sensing system;
- and
- pulse conditioning componentry arranged to condition sensing pulses travelling along the fiber,
- wherein the pulse conditioning componentry includes a bandpass filter to maintain the spectral form of the pulses.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.