Capabilities and limitations of tracing spatial temperature patterns by fiber‐optic distributed temperature sensing

Increasing numbers in interdisciplinary applications of Fiber-optic DistributedTemperature Sensing (FO-DTS) call for a quantitative assessment of the limitations anduncertainties of this new technology. This study conducts controlled laboratory experimentsto analyze the qualitative (signal size and location) and quantitative (signal intensity)accuracies of FO-DTS surveys of temperature signals higher and lower than ambienttemperature, ranging from well above to critically below the FO-DTS sampling interval.Our results reveal that qualitative and quantitative accuracies of FO-DTS measuredtemperatures critically decline with decreasing signal size, in particular for signals near thespatial sampling interval. Decreasing detection accuracy risks the masking of realtemperature variation in highly dynamic systems. The resulting potential ambiguity ofinterpretations of signal size, intensity, and absolute location will have to be considered infuture experimental design and interpretation of FO-DTS surveys.

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