Simultaneous optical power delivery and distributed BOTDR sensing through cross-band wavelength multiplexing over a fiber link

Optical fibers offer significant advantages in both power delivery and distributed sensing. In remote areas where stable power supply is not easy to access, distributed optical fiber sensing (DOFS), which offers long-distance monitoring capability, and power-over-fiber (PoF), which can provide energy for connected electronics or other sensors, are highly desired simultaneously. In this Letter, the PoF-DOFS hybrid system is proposed and experimentally verified for the first time to our knowledge. By multiplexing the power channel and the sensing channel with large wavelength separation, the cross talk is greatly reduced. The results show that the Brillouin frequency shift under different temperatures in the Brillouin optical time domain reflectometry remains nearly unaffected by the high-power transmission background, and the optical power transmission efficiency up to ∼66% can be achieved over a 1.3 km fiber link. This work paves the way for further research on the PoF-DOFS hybrid system and gives a valuable solution for creating a multi-parameter, multi-scale sensing network without the need for a local power source.