Broadband Optical Chaos And Its Application In Optical Access Networks And Fiber Sensing

This thesis demonstrates a simple approach to generating wideband optical chaos by an semiconductor optical amplifier(SOA) ring structure. The output light has a broadband optical 3dB bandwidth of 60 nm from 1500 nm to 1560 nm, which covers the whole C-band work region. The chaotic output has a noise-like waveform in time series, and its autocorrelation curve has a thin and sharp ? function shape. The thesis applies the light source to the fault detection of optical access networks and fiber sensing area.The correlation reflectometry based on an SOA ring can be used to locate precisely the fiber faults among all branches in a wavelength-division-multiplexing passive optical network(WDM-PON). Moreover, correlation function can be used as a new demodulation method in fiber sensing area. The main content of the thesis includes:(1) The characteristics of the SOA ring light source and the working principle of the correlation reflectometry. We demonstrate a proof-of-concept experiment for the fault detection in WDM-PON. The correlation reflectometry realizes a range-independent resolution of 3cm.(2) We propose the correlation demodulation as a new kind of demodulation method to achieve axial strain sensing and temperature sensing. We demonstrate a proof-of-concept experiment to test and verify the correlation demodulation in quasi-distributed fiber bragg grating sensing network.(3) Based on correlation function, we propose the section correlation method to improve static measurement. The section correlation method can be used to reflect a sensing process dynamically by the variation of correlation peak values. We set a fiber optic vibration sensing experiment to test and verify the section correlation method.