From the viewpoint of the time-varying general characteristic of various disturbances,categories of the fiber-optic disturbance distributed sensing technology are presented. The system structures,detection principles,location methods,characteristics and application fields of fiber-optic time-varying disturbance distributed sensing (TDDS) technology are analyzed. Two common kinds of the TDDS technology called optical time domain reflectometry (OTDR) and interferometer are introduced in the round. A novel chaos active fiber-optic TDDS technology is described in detail,and the principles,advantages and disadvantages of the location methods of various TDDS research schemes and the last location methods are emphasized. Finally the directions of promoting wide application of the fiber-optic TDDS technology are proposed,which improve the real-time properties and anti-jamming ability and reduce the false alarm ratio of the TDDS system.