Pulse-Width Multiplexing ϕ-OTDR for Nuisance-Alarm Rate Reduction

A pulse-width multiplexing method for reducing the nuisance-alarm rate of a phase-sensitive optical time-domain reflectometer ([Formula: see text]-OTDR) is described. In this method, light pulses of different pulse-widths are injected into the sensing fiber; the data acquired at different pulse-widths are regarded as the outputs of different sensors; and these data are then processed by a multisensor data fusion algorithm. In laboratory tests with a sensing fiber on a vibrating table, the effects of pulse-width on the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the [Formula: see text]-OTDR data are observed. Furthermore, by utilizing the SNR as the feature in a feature-layer algorithm based on Dempster–Shafer evidential theory, a four-pulse-width multiplexing [Formula: see text]-OTDR system is constructed, and the nuisance-alarm rate is reduced by about 70%. These experimental results show that the proposed method has great potential for perimeter protection, since the nuisance-alarm rate is significantly reduced by using a simple configuration.