Analysis of SNR penalty in Brillouin optical time-domain analysis sensors induced by laser source phase noise

In this paper, we analyze numerically the effect of phase noise from the laser in Brillouin optical time-domain analysis (BOTDA) sensors. Due to laser phase noise, the phase shift between pump and probe beams is a stochastic variable with zero mean and variance changing with the position along the fiber. The numerical results, carried out for various fiber lengths and pump pulse durations, show that laser phase noise induces a reduction of the average Brillouin gain, as well as an increase of the overall system noise. Preliminary experimental results, carried out by use of a conventional BOTDA system and two DFB diode lasers having different linewidth (63 and 900 kHz), support the numerical analysis.