Sidelobe Suppression Method with Improved CLEAN Algorithm for Pulse Compression OTDR

Although pulse compression optical time domain reflectometry (PC-OTDR) exhibits high performance in spatial resolution and dynamic range, it inevitably introduces auto-correlation sidelobes, potentially impacting measurement accuracy. In this letter, an improved CLEAN algorithm is proposed to efficiently suppress sidelobes and enhance the peak-to-sidelobe ratio (PSLR) of signals in PC-OTDR. The proposed method introduces an adaptive step factor instead of the traditional fixed factor to reduce the number of iterations. Compared to the traditional method, the proposed method achieves a 2.87 dB improvement of PSLR from a 10 km sensing fiber. In addition, the computation time cost is significantly reduced, which is 1.92 s less than that of the traditional CLEAN algorithm.