A Comprehensive Study of Optical Fiber Acoustic Sensing

TLDR

The optical fiber acoustic sensing system is suitable for long‑distance monitoring of acoustic signals generated by external disturbances, and quasi‑distributed and distributed technologies are differentiated to meet different application requirements. This paper presents an overview of recent advances in optical fiber acoustic sensing systems across military defense, structural health monitoring, petroleum exploration, and development. The study reviews advances in Fabry‑Perot interferometers, continuous Fiber Bragg grating arrays, and rapid development of Mach‑Zehnder, Michelson, and Sagnac interferometry for demodulation optimization, along with phase‑sensitive OTDR research on signal‑to‑noise improvement and mixed optical structure design.

Abstract

The optical fiber acoustic sensing system is suitable for long-distance monitoring of the acoustic signals generated by the external disturbances. According to the continuity of sensing units, quasi-distributed and distributed optical fiber acoustic sensing technologies are differentiated to meet different application requirements. On the one hand, the recent progress of Fabry-Perot interferometer (FPI) focusing on the diaphragm material, and the research hotspots in the field of the continuous Fiber Bragg grating (FBG) array are firstly reviewed. On the other hand, Mach-Zehnder interferometry (MZI), Michelson interferometry (MI), and Sagnac interferometry (SI) have rapidly developed in the aspect of the demodulation algorithm optimization with the purpose of the sensing performance improvement. Moreover, the current primary research works of the phase-sensitive optical time-domain reflectometer (φ-OTDR) are the signal-to-noise ratio improvement and the mixed optical structure design. Finally, this paper presents an overview of the recent advances of optical fiber acoustic sensing system in the application domains of military defense, structural health monitoring, petroleum exploration, and development.