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Abstract

Systems and methods are disclosed for distributed temperature and strain sensing along a length of an infrastructure. Two optical sources, such as, external cavity lasers with a narrow linewidth, are used for launching a probe signal into a sensing fiber coupled to the infrastructure, and for producing a local oscillation signal, respectively. The optical sources are coherently locked with a predefined frequency offset with respect to each other, the predefined frequency offset being in the order of the Brillouin frequency shift. The optical sources are included in an optical phase lock loop (OPLL) system. A balanced heterodyne receiver for narrow band detection at radio frequency (RF) bandwidth receives an optical signal generated by coherent mixing of a backscattered probe signal with the Brillouin frequency shift and the local oscillation signal, and produces an output indicative of one or both of a measured temperature and a measured strain.

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First Claim