Technical Background
Optical Frequency Domain Reflectometry (OFDR)
Luna’s shape and position sensing technology is based on optical frequency domain reflectometry (OFDR). Using the basic network topology shown in Figure 4, OFDR provides a means of measuring distributed strain along an optical fiber with extremely high resolution. Using state-of-the-art phase-tracking techniques to compare Rayleigh scatter measurements with a baseline reference state, Luna’s OFDR system can achieve +/- 1.6με resolution over 1.5mm [1] and better than 50m/point spatial resolution [2]. The OFDR topology shown in Figure 4 is the basis for a number of Luna’s core technologies, including the OBRTM optical network interrogator and ODiSITM distributed sensing system.