Fiber Sensing for Critical Infrastructure

Distributed fiber sensing offers a versatile range of capabilities, enabling monitoring of various physical parameters critical to infrastructure health. The three primary types of fiber sensing utilized in infrastructure monitoring are for temperature, strain, and acoustics.

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Fiber optic sensing systems assist critical infrastructure ranging from telecommunication services, oil, gas and water pipelines to mining, marine applications, electrical power transmission and data center interconnects in optimizing efficiency and implementing preventive protection and security. Fiber sensing technology involves the integration of optical fibers within the infrastructure to monitor various physical parameters in real time that can prevent outages, avoid costly repairs to critical infrastructure and help in faster restoration.

Fiber optic sensing

Fiber optic sensing uses the physical properties of light as it travels along a fiber to detect changes in temperature, strain, vibration (acoustics) and other parameters. Fiber optic sensing utilizes fiber as the sensor to create thousands of continuous sensing points along the fiber. The technique is called “distributed fiber optic sensing,” where a standard single optical fiber can act as an extended sensor over long distances and with high spatial resolution, covering vast areas of critical infrastructure.

Changes in the surrounding physical parameters, such as strain or temperature, cause minute variations in the light’s characteristics, which can be detected and analysed. Advanced signal processing techniques allow engineers to convert these variations into valuable data. Traditional fault detection methods can be slow and costly, often requiring extensive manual inspection. Fiber optic sensing can quickly identify and locate faults caused by physical damage, environmental factors or operational anomalies.

Applications of fiber optic sensing