Energy harvesting over a fiber-optic distributed acoustic sensor

Fiber-optic distributed acoustic sensor (DAS) has been deployed for real-time monitoring of various physical phenomena. The operational principle of DAS relies on monitoring backscattered light from a fiber while leaving the pump optical pulses to get wasted at the fiber distal end. Here, we report on energy harvesting from the DAS pump optical signal to supply energy to passive devices. In this work, a DAS over a similar to 1.1-km single-mode fiber (SMF) detects a 200-Hz vibration event produced by a piezoelectric transducer (PZT) while harvesting a 1.58-mW optical signal to charge a 10-F supercapacitor.