We propose a phase-sensitive optical time-domain reflectometry (Φ-OTDR) scheme with counterpumping fiber Brillouin amplification (FBA). High-sensitivity perturbation detection over 100 km is experimentally demonstrated as an example. FBA significantly enhances the probe pulse signal, especially at the second half of the sensing fiber, with only 6.4 dBm pump power. It is confirmed that its amplification efficiency is much higher than 28.0 dBm counterpumping fiber Raman amplification. The FBA Φ-OTDR scheme demonstrated in this work can also be incorporated into other distributed fiber-optic sensing systems for extension of sensing distance or enhancement of sensing signal level.

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Abstract. The problem of earthquake prediction has stimulated the research for correlation between seismic activity and ionospheric anomaly. Many observations have shown the existence of anomaly of critical frequency of ionospheric F-region, foF2, before earthquake onset. Ionospheric sounding has been conducted routinely for more than 60 years in China by the China Research Institute of Radiowave Propagation (CRIRP), and deveoloped a very powerful ability to observe the ionosphere. In this paper, we briefly describe the anomalous variation of the foF2 before M s 8.0 Wenchuan earthquake (occurred on 12 May 2008 at 14:28 LT; 31.00 • N, 103.40 • E), which is a sign of the great interest arising in the seismo-ionospheric investigation of Chinese researchers. Furthermore, we introduce the routine work on seismoionospheric anomaly by the ground based high-resolution ionospheric observation (GBHIO) network comprising 5 vertical and 20 oblique sounding stations.

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Chalcogenide optical fibers are currently undergoing intensive investigation with the aim of exploiting the excellent glass transmission and nonlinear characteristics in the near-and mid-infrared for several applications. Further enhancement of these properties can be obtained, for a particular application, with optical fibers specifically designed that are capable of providing low effective area together with a properly tailored dispersion, matching the characteristics of the laser sources used to excite nonlinear effects. Suspended-core photonic crystal fibers are ideal candidates for nonlinear applications, providing small-core waveguides with large index contrast and tunable dispersion. In this paper, the dispersion properties of As 2 S 3 suspended-core fibers are numerically analyzed, taking into account, for the first time, all the structural parameters, including the size and the number of the glass bridges. The results show that a proper design of the cladding struts can be exploited to significantly change the fiber properties, altering the maximum value of the dispersion parameter and shifting the zero-dispersion wavelengths over a range of 400 nm.