Employing the ForWaRD Method to Improve Resolution of Conventional OTDR for Application in SHM

As a fiber sensor, OTDR became more popular to measure parameters such as strain and temperature in structural health monitoring (SHM) simultaneously. Since the accuracy of range resolution in OTDR is determined by the laser’s pulse width, the range resolution in order of centimetre achieved by employing of picoseconds lasers which are not commercial. In this paper, to achieve this accuracy with conventional OTDR, ForWaRD method is employed to deconvolve and denoise the detected signal simultaneously. Simulations show that this method improves resolution of conventional OTDR system to the order of several centimetres.

Keywords:

ForWaRD method , OTDR , Structural health monitoring , Wavelet