METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR GENERATION AND TRANSMISSION OF HIGH ENERGY OPTICAL PULSES FOR LONG RANGE MEASUREMENTS

摘要

A method and apparatus for generating and transmitting high energy optical pulses are described. Distributed temperature sensors usually use Raman scattering in optical fibres as the means to determine the temperature. Here, light from a laser source is sent down a fibre and the small amount of light that is scattered back towards the source is analysed. As the fibre length increases, the resolutions of the temperature and loss measurements become poorer. This is because losses in an optical fibre attenuate the signal. An obvious solution to this problem is to launch more light into the fibre to compensate for the losses but stimulated Raman scattering limits how much light may be launched. The present invention solves this problem by using a pulse conversion method to maximise the resultant pulse energy while the power is kept below SRS threshold.