Abstract

In this article, we exploit the temporal analogue of ghost imaging technique, demonstrating computational Brillouin optical time-domain reflectometry (BOTDR) that aims to reduce the sampling rate requirement greatly compared to the traditional BOTDR, which realizes sensing purposes by sending a light pulse into an optical fiber and detecting its spontaneous Brillouin scattering optical signal. The proposed computational approach regards the time-domain scattering signal associated to one optical pulse as a temporal image, which can be retrieved by correlating the pre-known binary codes as which light beam is modulated and the collected light signals which are “integrated” by spontaneous Brillouin scattering in the optical fiber based on differential ghost imaging protocol. The preliminary experimental results show that the sampling rate of the computational BOTDR is inversely proportional to the total time duration of the binary sequence, and three orders of magnitude reduction compared to that of the traditional methods can be achieved, offering potential design simplification and cost reduction for BOTDR technique.