Ultra-high extinction ratio optical pulse generation with a thin film lithium niobate modulator for distributed acoustic sensing

Yuan Shen; Xiaoqian Shu; Lingmei Ma; Shaoliang Yu; Gengxin Chen; Liu Liu; Renyou Ge; Bigeng Chen; Yunjiang Rao

doi:10.1364/PRJ.504867

Journals >Photonics Research >Volume 12 >Issue 1 >Page 40 > Article

Photonics Research
Vol. 12, Issue 1, 40 (2024)

Ultra-high extinction ratio optical pulse generation with a thin film lithium niobate modulator for distributed acoustic sensing

Yuan Shen¹, Xiaoqian Shu¹, Lingmei Ma¹, Shaoliang Yu², Gengxin Chen³, Liu Liu³, Renyou Ge¹, Bigeng Chen^1、*, and Yunjiang Rao^1、4

Author Affiliations

¹Research Center for Optical Fiber Sensing, Zhejiang Laboratory, Hangzhou 311100, China

²Research Center for Intelligent Optoelectronic Computing, Zhejiang Laboratory, Hangzhou 311100, China

³International Research Center for Advanced Photonics, College of Optical Science and Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China

⁴Fiber Optics Research Center (FORC), Key Laboratory of Optical Fiber Sensing and Communications, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 611731, China

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DOI: 10.1364/PRJ.504867 Cite this Article Set citation alerts

Yuan Shen, Xiaoqian Shu, Lingmei Ma, Shaoliang Yu, Gengxin Chen, Liu Liu, Renyou Ge, Bigeng Chen, Yunjiang Rao. Ultra-high extinction ratio optical pulse generation with a thin film lithium niobate modulator for distributed acoustic sensing[J]. Photonics Research, 2024, 12(1): 40 Copy Citation Text

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Abstract

We experimentally demonstrate ultra-high extinction ratio (ER) optical pulse modulation with an electro-optical modulator (EOM) on thin film lithium niobate (TFLN) and its application for fiber optic distributed acoustic sensing (DAS). An interface carrier effect leading to a relaxation-tail response of TFLN EOM is discovered, which can be well addressed by a small compensation component following the main driving signal. An ultra-high ER > 50 dB is achieved by canceling out the tailed response during pulse modulation using the EOM based on a cascaded Mach–Zehnder interferometer (MZI) structure. The modulated optical pulses are then utilized as a probe light for a DAS system, showing a sensitivity up to

- 62.9 dB \cdot rad / {Hz}^{2}

(7 pε/√Hz) for 2-km single-mode sensing fiber. Spatial crosstalk suppression of 24.9 dB along the fiber is also obtained when the ER is improved from 20 dB to 50 dB, clearly revealing its importance to the sensing performance.