Comparison of wavelength-division-multiplexed distributed fiber Raman amplifier networks for sensors.

A novel distributed fiber Raman amplified star topology used for optical sensor wavelength-division multiplexing is proposed. The performance of this star configuration is compared to an optically amplified bus topology. The two different network topologies are compared and demonstrated experimentally and theoretically as means of gathering information from four wavelength-division-multiplexed photonic sensors. We report how the star configuration yields better signal-to-noise ratios than the bus topology. Furthermore, this improvement is made without increasing the complexity of the regular star topologies.