光纤随机激光器是一种新型光纤激光器，与常规光纤激光器相比，得益于其无谐振模式、更好的稳定性、更高的可靠性、更简单的结构等优势，近年来在高功率/高效率、宽谱发射、低相干性等多类型新光源探索方面得到了长足的发展，产生了系列研究成果.作为国内最早开展全光纤随机激光器研究的团队负责人，本文作者首先系统回顾了光纤随机激光器的发展历程，然后重点介绍了近年来光纤随机激光器取得的重要研究进展和在光纤传感、光通信等领域的应用进展，最后对其未来发展提出了展望.

Random fiber laser is a new type of fiber lasers. Compared with conventional fiber lasers, benefiting from its modeless, better stability, higher realibility, simpler structure and many other advantages, random fiber lasers have developed quite well in recent years in realization of a number of novel light sources including high power/high efficiency, broadband, low coherence, etc, leading to many research achievements. The author of this review is the leader of the first group to carry out research on Random fiber lasers in China. The development history of random fiber lasers is firstly summarized systematically. Then, the recent advances in random fiber lasers and their applications to optical fiber sensing and communication are introduced mainly. Finally, the future developments of random fiber lasers are prospected.