Silicon photonic interrogator for Brillouin optical time-domain analysis

We present the first integrated interrogator for Brillouin optical time-domain analysis (BOTDA) based on the silicon-on-insulator (SOI) platform. The integrated interrogator comprises four functional sections: the light source selection and distribution section, the probe light generation section, the pump light generation section, and the photo detection section. In the demo experiment using single-pulse configuration, we achieve a 0.28MHz Brillouin frequency shift (BFS) uncertainty over 25km of sensing fiber, with 5m spatial resolution and 1000 times of averaging.