We have implemented a distributed sensor system based on an array of fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs), which can measure up to 1000 points with a single piece of fiber. The system consists of FBGs having the same resonant wavelengths and small reflectivities (0.1 dB), and a wavelength tunable optical time-domain reflectometer (OTDR). To interrogate the distributed grating sensors and to address the event locations simultaneously, we have utilized the tunable OTDR. A thermoelectric temperature controller was used to tune the emission wavelength of the OTDR. The operating temperature of the laser diode was changed. By tuning the pulse wavelength of the OTDR, we could identify the FBGs whose resonant wavelengths were under change within the operating wavelength range of the DFB LD. A novel sensor cable with dry core structure and tensile cable was fabricated to realize significant construction savings at an industrial field and in-door and out-door applications. For experiments, a sensor cable having 52 gratings with 10 m separations was fabricated. To prevent confusion with unexpected signals from the front-panel connector zone of the OTDR, a 1 km buffer cable was installed in front of the OTDR. The proposed system could distinguish and locate the gratings that were under temperature variation from 20 to 70.

Orthogonal modulation provides low probability of bit error, however its bandwidth efficiency is very low. Biorthogonal code may double the bandwidth efficiency, but its required bandwidth grows exponentially with the number of input bits as in orthogonal modulation. In this paper, we propose a multi-code biorthogonal code keying (MBCK) scheme that significantly reduces the signal bandwidth with the benefit from orthogonal waveform coding maintained. The system consists of multiple waveform coding blocks, and the sum of output codewords is transmitted. A problem with MBCK is that output signal is multi-level, which requires amplifier with high linearity. So it may not be an appropriate scheme for portable unit where power efficiency is highly important. We also propose a modified MBCK scheme that guarantees constant amplitude output. The transmitter of the proposed scheme contains a redundant waveform coder whose input is generated by encoding the information bits. Adding the codewords from all constituent waveform coding blocks, the composite signal has constant amplitude. It is also shown that the redundant bits are not only used to make constant amplitude signal but also used to improve the BER performance at the receiver.