A Kramers-Kronig (KK) receiver is applied to a phase-sensitive optical time domain reflectometry based on direct detection. An imbalanced Mach-Zehnder interferometer with a 2×2 coupler is used in sensing system to encode the phase information into optical intensity. The directly obtained signal is treated as the in-phase component, and the KK receiver provides the quadrature component by Hilbert transform of the obtained signal, so that the optical phase can be retrieved by IQ demodulation. The working principle is well explained, and the obtained phase variance is theoretically analyzed. The experiment demonstrates the functionality of the sensor and validates the theoretical analysis.