Single-shot distributed Brillouin optical time domain analyzer.

We demonstrate a novel single-shot distributed Brillouin optical time domain analyzer (SS-BOTDA). In our method, dual-polarization probe with orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) modulation is used to acquire the distributed Brillouin gain spectra, and coherent detection is used to enhance the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) drastically. Distributed temperature sensing is demonstrated over a 1.08 km standard single-mode fiber (SSMF) with 20.48 m spatial resolution and 0.59 °C temperature accuracy. Neither frequency scanning, nor polarization scrambling, nor averaging is required in our scheme. All the data are obtained through only one-shot measurement, indicating that the sensing speed is only limited by the length of fiber.