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Published in IET Optoelectronics
Received on 2nd July 2013
Revised on 28th January 2014
Accepted on 17th February 2014
doi: 10.1049/iet-opt.2013.0146

ISSN 1751-8768

High-performance Brillouin distributed temperature

sensor using Fourier wavelet regularised
deconvolution algorithm
Himansu Shekhar Pradhan, Prasant Kumar Sahu
School of Electrical Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Bhubaneswar, Bhubaneswar 751013, Odisha, India
E-mail: pks@iitbbs.ac.in

Abstract: In this study, the authors presented a distributed optical fibre temperature sensor whose performance is improved using
the optimisation techniques and Fourier wavelet regularised deconvolution (ForWaRD) method. As the input power launched into
the sensing fibre is critical, the authors have considered both conventional optimisation technique and evolutionary optimisation
techniques namely: genetic algorithm, differential evolution algorithm and particle swarm optimisation algorithm to increase the
stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) threshold power. Using the optimised value of the parameters and employing evolutionary
computing techniques, the proposed 50 km long temperature sensing system offers a 4.7 dB improvement in SBS threshold power
over the design of experiment based system. It is being verified that power of the backscattered signals approximately are the
convolution of the input pulsed power and corresponding backscatter optical fibre impulse responses. The Fourier wavelet
regularised deconvolution (ForWaRD) method is employed to improve the spatial resolution of the proposed sensing system
without reducing the pulse width of the input pulse. Employing ForWaRD technique a 10 m better spatial resolution observed
as compared with the Fourier deconvolution technique. The proposed 50 km long temperature sensing system exhibits a
temperature resolution of 1.85 K because of suppression of SBS threshold and noise reduction.

1 Introduction Brillouin scattering (SBS) mechanism. The

Distributed fibre-optic sensing technology offers the ability;
to realise continuous, real-time and automated monitoring
and warning system. This technology offers several
advantages, such as minimised downtime, avoidance of
catastrophic failure, free from electromagnetic interference,
light in weight, small in size, ease of integration with the
structure, long in service life and ease of maintenance
[1, 2]. In addition to the above, it also functions as a
non-destructive evaluator. In contrast to signal processing
and improved systems for distributed sensor system design,
the sensing media optimisation is a relatively new field of
research. A number of optical fibre properties have been
studied under this work in order to determine how to
optimise their Brillouin characteristics including the number
of Brillouin peaks, linewidth, temperature coefficient, and
signal-to-noise ratio. In particular, the main advantage of
fibre-based distributed temperature sensors compared with
conventional or point sensors is that their unparalleled
ability to continuously and accurately monitor the
temperature and/or strain profile over a longer sensing
distances with high spatial resolution [3]. Among the
back-scattering principle based distributed sensors,
Brillouin-based distributed sensors (BDS) are characterised
by higher back-scattering intensities. However, the
downside is the receiver complexity. BDS [4, 5] can be
implemented using either spontaneous or stimulated
spontaneous-BDS require a simpler implementation scheme
[6]. However, the stimulated-BDS allows for higher
accuracy and resolution over a long sensing range but
requires access to both the ends of the fibre and more
complex detection system [7]. In spontaneous Brillouin
distributed sensor, the fibre non-linearities play major role
in sensing process. The major fibre non-linearities are
basically (i) self-phase modulation, (ii) cross phase
modulation, (iii) stimulated Raman scattering, (iv) SBS and
(v) four wave mixing effects. The performance of the
sensing system can be degraded because of these fibre
non-linearities. One serious limitation in long range
fibre-based system design is the SBS in the fibre [8]. The
SBS process reflects most of the incident pump power
toward the input end of the fibre. Suppression of SBS by
increasing the SBS threshold using the proposed scheme
will be useful for improving the spatial resolution or in
other words for achieving longer sensing distance under the
same measurement conditions. Several SBS suppression
techniques were reported in the literature [9–12]. These
techniques improve the SBS threshold by manipulating
either the Brillouin bandwidth or by limiting the gain
experienced by the back reflection signal. One of the active
SBS suppression methods as reported in literature describes
the broadening of the incident light spectrum to reduce its
overlap with the narrow Brillouin gain spectrum. In other
words, spreading the optical spectrum outside of the SBS

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bandwidth will helps in suppressing the SBS effect. This can
be achieved directly by frequency modulation at the source or
by phase modulation without introducing significant intensity
modulation on the laser. In this case, the laser is dithered in
either phase or frequency by a controlling electrical
waveform. Typical waveforms used for dithering include
sinusoidal signal, combinations of multiple sinusoidal signal
and pseudo-random bit sequences. In our work, we
proposed a method to mitigate the SBS effect using
optimisation techniques. In order to mitigate the SBS effect,
we have increased the SBS threshold power so that more
input power is launched to the fibre.
Other reported works in the field of fibre distributed sensor
mainly focused on increasing the measurement range by
compensating the fibre loss using distributed Raman
amplification [13] or by introducing some coding
techniques [14]or by receiver optimisation [15]. The spatial
resolution enhancement of long pulse optical time-domain
reflectometer (OTDR) for application in structural health
monitoring employing ForWaRD technique is described by
Bahrampour et al. in 2010. However, in this paper we have
investigated the process of sensing media optimisation
using evolutionary optimisation scheme for improvement of
the measurement range in Brillouin distributed temperature
sensor (BDTS) system. The major achievement of this
proposed work includes a higher temperature resolution and
an improved spatial resolution without reducing the pulse
width of the input pulse. We have investigated three
different global optimisation techniques such as genetic
algorithm (GA), differential evolution algorithm (DE) and
particle swarm optimisation (PSO) and compared the results
with the conventional optimisation technique that is, design
of experiment (DOE). We have optimised the fibre
parameters of SBS threshold power using conventional
method and the evolutionary computing global searching
method. The major advantage of evolutionary computing
method in contrast to conventional statistical method is that
it will give the global solutions. Basically, in global search
algorithms one needs to repeat the process number of times
in order to obtain the global solution. In connection, with
number of iterations we have shown that the results
obtained using DE algorithm is faster one to converge
towards the global solution. In particular, we have shown
both by means of theoretical and simulation results a
significant improvements in spatial resolution, temperature
resolution and suppression of SBS effect employing the
optimisation techniques and ForWaRD technique for 50 km
of sensing range.
2 Theoretical model
In this paper, for a Brillouin-based distributed temperature
sensor of 50 km sensing range, we have demonstrated the
suppression of the SBS threshold power using optimisation
techniques and spatial resolution improvement using the
ForWaRD technique.
2.1 SBS suppression factors
The SBS threshold can be evaluated approximately using the
following equation [16]


KAeff DvL
PSBS
21 1+ (1)
gB Leff DvB
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where PSBS is the SBS threshold power, K is the polarisation
factor and Aeff is the effective core area of the sensing fibre. gB
is the Brillouin gain constant, which is about 5 × 10−11 m/W
for fused silica glass [17]. ΔvL and ΔvB are laser linewidth and
Brillouin linewidth, respectively. Leff is the effective length of
fibre defined by fibre attenuation coefficient α and length of
fibre L and given by the following equation [18]
1 − e−aL
Leff = (2)
a
The parameters of a fibre mostly influencing the SBS effect
are as follows: polarisation factor, effective core area,
Brillouin gain constant, effective length of sensing fibre,
fibre attenuation coefficient, laser pulse width and Brillouin
linewidth. The fibre sensor system may not work in their
best possible configurations, since too many parameters
affect the performance of the fibre under test. In order to
realise an optimised system using fibre as the sensing
element, it is required to optimise all of them or the most
effecting parameters. However, in our evolutionary based
optimisation activities we have optimised five factors
namely effective core area, Brillouin gain constant, fibre
attenuation coefficient, laser linewidth and Brillouin
linewidth. We explore and compare our estimated results
with DOE based optimisation system results and also with
the theoretical results.
2.2 Optimisation algorithms
An optimisation algorithm is quite helpful to find the best
global solution. Global optimisation methods are tools to
search global maximums and minimums. GA [19–21] has
been used in many different areas to find the global
solution. In this paper, we have considered three different
evolutionary algorithms. The techniques for searching
global solutions are different in different algorithms. The
GA is a search algorithm for optimisation, based on the
mechanics of natural selection and genes [22]. The power
of this algorithm is derived from a very simple heuristic
assumption that the best solution will be found in the
regions of solution space containing high proposition of
good solution, and that these regions can be identified
by judicious and robust sampling of the solution space.
The mechanics of GA consists three stages namely:
(a) population initialisation; (b) operators; and (c) reselection:
(a) Population initialisation: The generation of the initial
population in GA is usually done randomly. In this
algorithm we have generated 100 initial populations.
(b) Operators: Basically, selection, crossover and mutation
are the three operators used in GA. The selection process is
an important process in GA. Using tournament selection a
new mating pool is created by the populations in proportion
to their fitness values. In order to survive the fittest, the
populations with better fitness are selected.
According to cross over probability the no of parent
populations are chosen for crossover operation. The
crossover operator swaps the parent populations partially to
generate the new populations. Since populations with better
fitness are selected, there is a tendency that the new
solutions will be very similar after several generations and
the diversity of the population may decline and this could
lead to stagnation of population. In order to avoid
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stagnation, mutation is executed. It is a mechanism to
introduce diversity in to the population.
(c) After the process of mutation, reselection of the new
populations will be executed best on the fitness value.
The second optimisation technique we have considered is
PSO [23, 24]. In PSO, a group of candidate solutions,
referred as particles, are moved around the solution space
according to two mathematical equations until the optimised
result which is a maximum or minimum of one or multiple
variables that satisfy the objective function are found.
During each iteration of the algorithm, two values related to
the swarm of particles must be considered. The first value is
the individual particles best position ‘pbesti’ and the second
value is the global best position of the swarm ‘gbest’.
Particles search in the solution space under two governing
equations: (i) velocity update; and (ii) position update. The
velocity update is given by the (3)
   
Vik+1 = wVik + C1 rand1 pbesti − Sik + C2 rand2 gbest −
where, Vik is the velocity of particle i at kth iteration, w is the
inertial constant, C1 andC2 are the acceleration constants,
rand is the uniformly distributed random number between 0
and 1, Sik is the current position of particle i at kth iteration,
pbesti is the best fitness value of the particle i and gbest is the
global best of the group of particles.
The position of each particle is updated using the following
Equation
Sik+1 = Sik + Vik+1
The procedure of PSO is described as follows:
Step 1: Initialise the position Si0 and the velocity Vi0 of each
particle randomly. Set counter k = 1 and the maximum
number kmax of iterations in the search. In this algorithm we
have taken 100 initial particles.
Step 2: Calculate the fitness value PSBS (Sik ) of each particle Sik
for determining the local best position pbestiand the global
best position gbest up to the current time.
Step 3: Update Vik+1 and Sik+1 using (3) and (4), respectively
for obtaining the new position and velocity of each particle.
It is to be noted that Vik+1 has an upper bound of velocity
Vmax, then Vik+1 = Vmax . If the current fitness value of
pbesti is larger than the previous one, replace pbesti with
the current one. If the current fitness value of gbest is larger
than the previous one, replace gbest with the current one. If
k < kmax then k = k + 1 and jump to step 2, else stop the search.
The third optimisation technique is the DE algorithm
[25–27]. This algorithm basically defined as real coded GA
but here mutation is done before the crossover operation.
There are four processes associated with DE are described
as follows:
Initialisation: In the initialisation process, the considered
parameter vector is given by (5)
 
xi , G = x1 , i, G, x2 , i, G, . . . , xD , i, G i = 1, 2, . . . ., N
where G the number of generations is, D is the number of
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parameters taken for optimisation and N is the size of the
population equals to 100. The upper and lower bounds for
each parameter are described by the given (6)
xLj ≤ xi,j.1 ≤ xU
j (6)
The initial parameter values are chosen randomly within the
j ]. The fitness function PSBS(xi) is calculated
interval [xLj xU
for all xi
Mutation: In this algorithm, each of the N parameter
vectors undergoes mutation, recombination and selection.
mutation expands the search space. For a given parameter
vector xi, G randomly selects three vectors x1, i, G, x2, i, G
and x3, i, G such that the indices i, r1, r2 and r3 are distinct
values. The weighted difference is given in (7)
vi, G + 1 = xr1 , G + F(xr2 , G − xr3 , G) (7)
Where the mutation factor F is a constant from [0, 2] and vi,
G + 1 is the donor vector.
Sik Recombination: Recombination processes interprets
(3) successful solutions from the previous generation. The trial
vector ui, G + 1 is developed from the elements of the target
vector xi, G and the elements of the donor vector vi, G + 1.
Then the elements of the donor vector entered the trial
vector with probability CR using the condition given below

u j,i,G+1 if rand j,i ≤ CR or j = Irand
u j,i,G+1 =
u j,i,G if randi,j . CR or j = Irand
where i = 1, 2, 3, ….., N; j = 1, 2, 3, ……., D, Irand is the
random integer between [1, 2, 3, ………, D] and CR is the
(4) crossover rate.
Selection: The target vector xi, G is compared with the trial
vector vi, G + 1 and the one with the highest function value is
admitted to the next generation as follows

ui,G+1 if f (ui,G+1 ) ≥ f (ui,G )
xi,G+1 =
xi,G otherwise
where i = [1, 2, …….., N].
All the above process will continue until the stopping
criteria is achieved.
In our proposed algorithms we have taken mutation factor
0.5, number of generation/iteration 100, crossover probability
0.8, mutation probability 0.1, inertial constant 0.5,
acceleration constants C1 and C2 are 2, crossover rate 0.8.
For all optimisation algorithm we have used the polarisation
constant as K = 1.
2.3 SBS threshold power model
2.3.1 Decision variables: In the proposed optimisation
problem, five decision variables are considered such as
effective core area Aeff, Brillouin gain constant gB and fibre
attenuation coefficient α, laser linewidth Δvl and Brillouin
linewidth ΔvB. SBS threshold power is mainly affected by
these parameters.
2.3.2 Fitness function: In this proposed work, we have
used the maximisation of fitness function (SBS threshold
power) for all optimisation algorithms as given in (1).
(5)
2.3.3 Constraints: There are some practical constraints for
selection of parameter bound and will be taken into account.
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Table 1 Ranges of parameter used in all proposed algorithms temperature, IRS and IBS are the intensities of Rayleigh and
Brillouin scattering signal, respectively. In order to obtain
Parameter Value
temperature profile along the sensing fibre, the LPR at the
effective core area, μm2 80–100
unknown temperature T is compared with the known
Brillouin gain constant, m/W 1.5 × 10−11–5 × 10−11 reference temperature TR, and given by (9) [31]
fibre attenuation coefficient, dB/km 0.1–0.2
laser linewidth, MHz 1–10

1 LPR(T )
Brillouin linewidth, MHz 25–35 T= 1− + TR (9)
Ks LPR(TR )

The ranges of the parameters used for all algorithms are
tabulated in Table 1.
2.4 Design of experiment
DOE is a conventional method for parameter optimisation
performed using Minitab [28, 29]. DOE is an efficient
method for simultaneous measurement of many factors and
to estimate effects of all data for each factor. The analysis is
carried out in terms of main effect plot and interaction plot.
The main effect is identified when the main response is
changed across a level of a factor. An interaction plot is a
plot of means for each level of a factor with the level of the
second factor held constant. An interaction appears when
the response of one factor is dependent of the response of
other factor. Three levels of value are selected for each of
the five factors. The five factors are effective core area,
Brillouin gain constant, fibre attenuation coefficient, laser
linewidth and Brillouin linewidth. The three levels of each
factor are given in Table 2. There are total 243 experiments
runs. Finally, we obtained the optimised value of the above
five factors as 90 μm2, 3 × 10−11 m/W, 0.15 dB/km and 05
and 30 MHz, respectively.
In the theoretical model we have considered a
Brillouin-based distributed temperature sensor using OTDR
principle. In OTDR an optical pulse is injected into the
fibre and the Rayleigh backscattered signal is measured at
the input end of the fibre. The location information ‘z’ can
be extracted by the time delay ‘t’ and the light velocity in
the fibre ‘vg’ as z = (tvg/2). In our proposed model, we have
measured the Brillouin backscattered signal intensity as well
as Rayleigh backscattered signal intensity in order to extract
the temperature information. The temperature information
can be extracted from Brillouin distributed temperature
sensing system by using Landau Placzek ratio (LPR) [30],
which is defined as the ratio of the Rayleigh power to
Brillouin power. The temperature dependence of the LPR is
given by the (8) [30]
IRS Tf
= (bT r0 VA2 − 1) (8)
IBS T
where βT is the isothermal compressibility, ρ0 is the material
density, VA is the acoustic velocity, Tf is the fictive
Table 2 Levels of five factors used in DOE
Name of factors Level 1 Level 2 Level 3
effective core area 80 μm2 90 μm2 100 μm2
Brillouin gain 1.5 × 10−11 m/W 3 × 10−11 m/W 5 × 10−11 m/W
constant
fibre attenuation 0.1 dB/km 0.15 dB/km 0.2 dB/km
coefficient
laser linewidth 1 MHz 5 MHz 10 MHz
Brillouin linewidth 25 MHz 30 MHz 35 MHz
where Ks is the temperature sensitivity of the proposed sensor.
In our proposed spontaneous based Brillouin distributed
temperature sensing system, we have considered the
backscatter impulse response f (t) defined as the
backscattered signal power in response to an injected unit
delta function signal. Assuming constant propagation loss
of fibre throughout its length, f (t) is expressed as
1
f (t) = aB vg SPin exp (−2az) (10)
2
where vg the group velocity within the fibre is, S is the
backward capture coefficient, Pin is the optical power
injected to the fibre and αB is the Brillouin scattering
coefficient of the fibre defined as [32]
8p3 n8 p2 kT
aB = (11)
3l40 rVA2
where n is the refractive index, p is the photoelastic
coefficient, k is the Boltzmann constant, T is the room
temperature of the fibre, ρ is the density of the silica, VA is
the acoustic velocity and λ0 is the wavelength of the
incident light. For silica fibre the Brillouin scattering
coefficient αB = 1.17 × 10−6 m−1 [32].
The backward capture coefficient S determines the amount
of scattered light captured within the numerical aperture of the
optical fibre and is given by
(NA)2
S= (12)
4n2
where NA is the numerical aperture of the fibre.
In the proposed system the received backscattered power at
the input of the fibre P(t) can be expressed as the convolution
of the injected pulsed power p(t) and the backscatter impulse
response f (t) and is given by
P(t) = p(t) ⊗ f (t)
(13)
In order to verify the validity of (13) we have considered a
pulse of width w0, and power Pi is launched in to the 50
km long fibre and have received the backscattered power at
the input fibre end with the addition of white Gaussian
noise. Similarly, for calculation of LPR we have calculated
the Rayleigh backscattered power. Theoretically, an input
pulse of duration w0 will generate the Rayleigh
backscattered power PR, with the function of time in
accordance with the following equation [33]
1
PR (t) = Pi gR w0 Svg exp ( − gR vg t) (14)
2
We can rewrite the above backscattered power PR expression

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as a function of length of fibre, z as

1  
PR (z) = Pi gR w0 Svg exp −2gR z (15)
2

where γR is the Rayleigh scattering coefficient, S is the

fraction of captured optical power, vg is the group velocity
within the fibre. The interference between the light
backscattered at different positions along the fibre results
the coherent Rayleigh noise (CRN) [34]. The measurement
accuracy is degraded by fluctuations in the backscattered
Rayleigh signals that are triggered by CRN. The
root-mean-square value of CRN as fraction of the Rayleigh
signal, fCRN can be expressed as [34]


vg
fCRN = (16)
4DzDv
Fig. 2 Best global solution using DE, PSO and GA
where vg the group velocity of light in fibre, Δz is the spatial
resolution and Δv is the linewidth of a source.
have used Fourier regularised deconvolution (FoRD) as
3 Simulations and results well as the ForWaRD to minimise the noise of extracted
temperature profile of the proposed system. We have
We have calculated the Rayleigh backscattered power as well calculated the temperature resolution and spatial resolution
as the Brillouin backscattered power by considering a 50 km employing both the deconvolution techniques of the
sensing range using the numerical simulation. In our proposed distributed temperature sensing system.
simulation, we have used an optical laser source operating The impulse response of Brillouin distributed temperature
at 1550 nm with 10 MHz linewidth with peak input power sensor for 50 km sensing range is simulated using (13). In
of 10 mW. We have considered CRN while calculating the our simulation, we modelled a leakage source with an
Rayleigh backscattered power. Rectangular pulse of 400 ns artificial rectangular pulse variation of temperature
duration used for simulation. The other parameters based on distribution around the point z = 25 km from the end point
silica fibre used for simulation are tabulated in Table 3. We of the optical fibre shown in Fig. 1, whereas the rest of
the fibre remains at reference temperature. We have taken
the reference temperature as 300 K and increased the
Table 3 Simulation parameters of the proposed system
temperature by 3 K at z = 25 km. we have applied the FoRD
Simulation parameters Values technique for extracting the temperature as measurand. For
extracting the temperature profile we have used the (9). The
fibre attenuation coefficient, α 0.2 dB/km temperature sensitivity Ks is 0.33%/K [35] is considered for
Boltzmann’s constant, k 1.38 × 10−23 J/K simulation. In our simulation, the following steps are
numerical aperture 0.12
fibre refractive index 1.5
involved in ForWaRD:
rayleigh scattering coefficient, γr 4.6 × 10−51/m
photoelastic coefficient, p 0.286
density of silica, ρ 2330 kg/m3
(a) Calculate the Fourier transform of the noisy impulse
response by Fourier deconvolution and shrinkage with the
parameter α of Tikhonov filter.
(b) Applying the wavelet de noising process for the noisy
impulse response calculated in the above step (a)

Fig. 1 Temperature distribution of the proposed 50 km sensing

system Fig. 3 Main effects plot for five factors (DOE)

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Fig. 4 Interaction plot for five factors (DOE)
Fig. 5 Simulated temperature profile applying both techniques
(c) In the de noising process we have used the wavelet filter
as ‘coif5’ in order to reduce the noise levels of the corrupted
impulse response.
We have shown the responses using the evolutionary
Algorithms (DE, PSO, GA) and the conventional DOE in
Figs. 2–4, respectively. The convergence rate of DE
towards global solution is faster than GA and PSO. We
have calculated the SBS threshold power after optimisation
using both optimisation techniques (DOE and Evolutionary
Computing) and compared with theoretical one.In order to
show the ability of the ForWaRD technique to the
deconvolution and denoising of the Brillouin backscattered
signal, the Tikhonov shrinkage parameter α = 0.00035 [36]
is applied to the output signal. We have shown the
temperature profile for the 50 km long proposed sensing
system using FoRD as well as ForWaRD technique in Fig. 5.
The temperature resolution using both FoRD and
ForWaRD applied deconvolution algorithms is shown in
Fig. 6. It has been estimated as an exponential fit of the
standard deviation of the measured temperature distribution
against distance. We have achieved the temperature
resolution of 1.78 and 1.85 K at 50 km distance of the
proposed system applying FoRD and ForWaRD,
respectively. On the other hand, the spatial resolution of the
proposed system obtained by calculating the 10–90%
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Fig. 6 Temperature resolution applying both techniques
Fig. 7 Spatial resolution applying both techniques
response of the rising temperature or 90–10% response of
the falling temperature with respect to the distance. We
have calculated the spatial resolution by the spline fit of the
10–90% response of rising temperature with respect to the
distance. Fig. 7 report the spatial resolution for FoRD and
ForWaRD technique, respectively. ForWaRD technique
outperforms the FoRD in terms of spatial resolution. A
spatial resolution improvement of 10 m was observed using
the ForWaRD technique over the FoRD technique because
of the suppression of the noise.
4 Conclusion
We have investigated and demonstrated a high performance
distributed fibre-optic temperature sensor. Our proposed
measurement system is capable of achieving extremely low
temperature uncertainties of the order of 1.85 K for 50 km
of sensing distance using only 10 mW of pulsed peak input
power. The observed spatial resolution for the above
measurement is 30 m. The temperature uncertainty is
currently limited by statistical fluctuations. The SBS
threshold level has been improved from 3.1 mW to 9.12
mW employing global optimisation compared with
conventional DOE based optimisation, for 50 km of sensing
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range. Results indicate that the ForWaRD technique can be
successfully applied in BDTS to improve the performance
features of the system, for example, spatial resolution as
well as the temperature resolution at a very low input power
level. The system has the potential for application for
remote monitoring of temperature over a long range.
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