Distributed Brillouin optical fiber temperature sensor for groundwater flow measurement

Abstract

We demonstrate the potential of Brillouin distributed fiber sensor for the measurement of groundwater flow in an experimental site of Port Douvot close to the city of Besan¸con. The flow measurement is obtained by using active heating method based on heat pulse instrument. An industrial sensor cable with single mode fiber and multimode fiber was immersed on ground. We compare distributed Brillouin sensor reflectometry (BOTDR) and Analysis (BOTDA) on single mode fiber (SMF) and multimode optical fiber (MMF) with a spatial resolution of 1 m, a temperature resolution of 0.2 °C and an acquisition time of 1 min. These parameters are compatible with hydrology application. Active heating of borehole water in conjunction with fiber optic distributed temperature sensor measurements are realized. Contrary to Raman based distributed temperature sensor, Brillouin instrument allows measuring absolute temperature measurement and simplify the implementation on the setup. We demonstrate in this paper that Brillouin scattering based temperature sensor can be used for hydrogeology application.