Enhanced stability and sensitivity of slope-assisted Brillouin optical correlation-domain reflectometry using polarization-maintaining fibers

We show that, even when a polarization scrambler is switched off, PMF-based SA-BOCDR can operate with higher stability than that of standard silica-fiber-based systems. This leads to reduced cost and enables the use of the optimized state of polarization for higher sensitivity. After investigation of the strain/temperature dependencies of the Brillouin frequency shift and the Brillouin spectral power in the PMF, we show that the strain/temperature sensitivity of the PMF-based SA-BOCDR is 1.4 times the value of the standard silica-fiber-based configuration; we then demonstrate distributed temperature measurement with higher stability and sensitivity.