Brillouin scattering is a dominant inelastic scattering observed in optical fibers, where the energy and momentum transfer between photons and acoustic phonons takes place. Narrowband reflection (or gain and loss) spectra appear in the spontaneous (or stimulated) Brillouin scattering, and their linear dependence of the spectral shift on ambient temperature and strain variations is the operation principle of distributed Brillouin sensors, which have been developed for several decades. In few-mode optical fibers (FMF's) where higher-order spatial modes are guided in addition to the fundamental mode, two different optical modes can be coupled by the process of stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS), as observed in the phenomena called intermodal SBS (two photons + one acoustic phonon) and intermodal Brillouin dynamic grating (four photons + one acoustic phonon; BDG). These intermodal scattering processes show unique reflection (or gain and loss) spectra depending on the spatial mode structure of FMF, which are useful not only for the direct measurement of polarization and modal birefringence in the fiber, but also for the measurement of environmental variables like strain, temperature, and pressure affecting the birefringence. In this paper, we present a technical review on recent development of distributed Brillouin sensors on the platform of FMF's.
Keywords: Brillouin scattering; distributed measurement; few-mode fiber; fiber optic sensors.