We demonstrate a photon-counting optical time-domain reflectometry with 42.19 dB dynamic range using an ultra-low noise up-conversion single photon detector. By employing the long wave pump technique and a volume Bragg grating, we reduce the noise of our up-conversion single photon detector, and achieve a noise equivalent power of -139.7 dBm/sqrt(Hz). We perform the OTDR experiments using a fiber of length 216.95 km, and show that our system can identify defects along the entire fiber length with a distance resolution better than 10 cm in a measurement time of 13 minutes.
@article{arxiv.1308.0512,
title = {217 km long distance photon-counting optical time-domain reflectometry based on ultra-low noise up-conversion single photon detector},
author = {Guo-Liang Shentu and Qi-Chao Sun and Xiao Jiang and Xiao-Dong Wang and Jason S. Pelc and M. M. Fejer and Qiang Zhang and Jian-Wei Pan},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1308.0512},
year = {2015}
}