High performance fibre-optic acoustic sensor array using a distributed EDFA and hybrid TDM/DWDM, scalable to 4096 sensors

An amplified 16 channel dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) array architecture is presented for interferometric fibre optic sensor array systems. This architecture employs a distributed Erbium doped fibre amplifier (EDFA) scheme to decrease the array insertion loss, and employs time division multiplexing (TDM) at each wavelength to increase the number of sensors that can be supported. The first experimental demonstration of this system is reported including results which show the potential for multiplexing and interrogating up to 4096 sensors using a single telemetry fibre pair with good system performance