Highly Scalable Amplified Hybrid TDM/DWDM Array Architecture for Interferometric Fiber-Optic Sensor Systems

We present a distributed amplified hybrid dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) and time division multiplexing (TDM) array architecture for large scale interferometric fiber-optic sensor array systems. This architecture employs a distributed Erbium doped fiber amplifier (EDFA) scheme to decrease the distribution loss among multiplexed wavelengths, and employs TDM at each wavelength to increase the total 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 fiber pair with good system performance. The number of interrogation sensors could be further increased by increasing the number of wavelength channels. These architectures would be of great importance in the application of systems requiring very large number of sensors with limited telemetry cabling.