Photonic integrated circuit-assisted optical time-domain reflectometer system

Optical time-domain reflectometers (OTDR) are photonic systems that consist of an interrogator, a receiver and a fiber optical cable and have applications in telecommunications, security, environmental monitoring, distributed temperature and strain sensing. Since OTDR systems are bulk optical setups that consume multiple Watts of power, have large mass and volume footprint and are vulnerable to thermal drift, deployment of OTDR systems in the field is expensive, complicated and may not necessarily yield accurate sensing results. Thus, a compact, low-power, inexpensive and thermal drift-free OTDR system needs to be developed for improving the accuracy and the viability of OTDR in the field. In this study, I present the design and modeling of a photonic integrated OTDR system design based on IMEC’s iSiPP50G silicon integrated photonic process design kit. The photonic integrated circuit includes a photonic modulator and a photodetector. Photonic power link budgets and the corresponding electronic signal-to-noise ratios are analyzed for 5–110 km fiber optical OTDR systems and power-efficient OTDR system designs are presented for inexpensive multiproject wafer fabrication.

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