Optical fiber cables for Brillouin distributed sensing

Brillouin distributed optical fiber sensors have proved to be a powerful technology for real-Time detection of strain and temperature. In such sensors the optical fiber is interrogated along its full length with a resolution down to decimeters and a frequency-encoding of the measurement data that is not affected by variation of the optical attenuation. The fiber sensing cable plays a key role, since it must provide accurate strain transfer, robustness and durability. In this paper, a novel, suitably designed fiber cable for achieving optimal strain measurement performance is presented. The concept and development phases are illustrated, together with results on the strain transfer capability.