Distributed optical fiber sensors offer unprecedented advantages, and the most remarkable one is the ability to continuously measure physical or chemical parameters along the entire optical fiber, which is attached to the device, structure and system. As the most recently investigated distributed optical fiber sensors, phase-sensitive optical time domain reflectometry (φ-OTDR), Brillouin optical time domain analysis (BOTDA) and Brillouin dynamic grating-optical time domain reflectometry (BDG-OTDR) techniques have been given tremendous attention on the advantage of quantitative measurements ability over high sensitivity and absolute measurement with long sensing distance, respectively. However, the accompanying limitations in terms of static measurement range, acquisition rate, laser frequency drifting noise, and spatial resolution limitations in these techniques hinder their performance in practical applications. This thesis pays particular attention to the above three distributed sensing techniques to explore the fundamental limitations of the theoretical model and improve the sensing performance. Before presenting the novel sensing scheme with improved sensing performance, an introduction about distributed fiber optical sensing, including three main light scattering mechanisms in optical fiber, the recent advancements in distributed sensing and key parameters of Rayleigh scattering- and Brillouin scattering-based sensing systems. After that, a study on the theoretical analysis of large chirping rate pulse generation and the theoretical model of using chirped pulse as interrogation signal in φ-OTDR, BOTDA and BDG-OTDR systems are given. In the disruptive experimental implementations, the sensing performance has been improved in different aspects. By using a random fiber grating array as the distributed sensor, a high-precision distributed time delay measurement in a CP φ-OTDR system is proposed thanks to the enhanced in-homogeneity and reflectivity. In addition, a simple and effective method that utilizes the reference random fiber grating to monitor the laser frequency drifting noise is demonstrated. Dynamic strain measurement with a standard deviation of 66 nε over the vibration amplitude of 30 με is achieved. To solve the limited static measurement range issue, a multi-frequency database demodulation (MFDD) method is proposed to release the large strain variation induced time domain trace distortion by tuning the laser initial frequency. The maximum measurable strain variation of about 12.5 με represents a factor of 3 improvements. By using the optimized chirped pulse φ-OTDR system, a practical application of monitoring the impact load response in an I-steel beam is demonstrated, in which the static and distributed strain variation is successfully reconstructed. To obtain an enhanced static measurement range without a complicated database acquisition process, a photonic approach for generating low-frequency drifting noise, arbitrary and large frequency chirping rate (FCR) optical pulses based on the Kerr effect in the nonlinear optical fiber is theoretically analyzed and experimentally demonstrated by using both fixed-frequency pump and chirped pump. Due to the Kerr effect-induced sinusoidal phase modulation in the nonlinear fiber, high order Kerr pulse with a large chirping rate is generated. Thus the static measurement range of higher order Kerr pulse is significantly improved. Chirped pulse BOTDA based on non-uniform fiber is also analyzed, showing a high acquisition rate that is only limited by the sensor length and averaging times due to the relative Brillouin frequency shift (BFS) changes are directly extracted through the local time delays between adjacent Brillouin traces from two single-shot measurement without frequency sweep process. BFS measurement resolution of 0.42 MHz with 4.5 m spatial resolution is demonstrated over a 5 km non-uniform fiber. A hybrid simultaneous temperature/strain sensing system is also demonstrated, showing a strain uncertainty of 4.3 με and temperature uncertainty of 0.32 °C in a 5 km non-uniform fiber. Besides, the chirped pulse is also utilized as a probe signal in the Brillouin dynamic grating (BDG) detection along the PM fiber for distributed birefringence variations sensing. The strict phase-matching condition only enables part of the frequency components within the chirped probe pulse to be reflected by BDG, giving an adjustable spatial resolution without photo lifetime limitation. The spatial resolution is determined by the frequency chirping rate of the probe pulse.