Spectrum Engineering of Stimulated Brillouin Scattering in Distributed Fiber Sensing and Optical Signal Processing

Stimulated Brillouin scattering is one of the dominant nonlinear effects in single mode optical fibers due to its low threshold. Its unique Lorentzian gain spectrum characteristic with the narrow linewidth of 20-30 MHz has enabled numerous of applications, such as optical signal processing, delay and light storage, optical spectrum analysis and distributed sensing. However, a fixed spectral characteristic cannot meet the requirements of a variety of applications. Therefore, an engineered, reconfigurable or arbitrary manipulated gain spectrum is of great importance. This book will start from the basics of stimulated Brillouin scattering and its principle for distributed fiber sensing and optical signal processing. The basic method for Brillouin gain spectrum engineering by the pump modulation and the superposition with Brillouin loss(es) will be introduced. As the main contain of this book, the application of Brillouin gain spectrum engineering in the field of static and dynamic distributed fiber sensing, and optical signal processing together with the advantages and benefits will be demonstrated in detail. Under the assistance of gain spectrum engineering, solutions have been proposed for drawbacks such as measurand resolution in static distributed fiber sensing, tradeoff between dynamic range and sensitivity in dynamic distributed fiber sensing, and inevitable Brillouin noise in optical and microwave photonic filters based on stimulated Brillouin scattering.