Distributed sensing systems and methods with efficient energy spectrum analysis

Abstract

A system includes an optical fiber and an interrogator to provide source light to the optical fiber. The system also includes a receiver coupled to the optical fiber. The receiver includes at least one fiber optic coupler that receives backscattered light and that produces one or more optical interferometry signals from the backscattered light. The receiver also includes photo-detectors that produce an electrical signal for each of the one or more optical interferometry signals. The system also includes at least one digitizer that digitizes each electrical signal. The system also includes at least one processing unit that processes each digitized electrical signal to obtain a distributed sensing signal and related energy spectrum information. The energy spectrum information corresponds to energy calculated for each of a limited number of frequency subbands by segmenting the distributed sensing signal into blocks having a predetermined block length and by applying a filter having a filter length that is smaller than the predetermined block length.