Optical Networking and SensingRead our Optical Networking and Sensing publications from our team of researchers. We are leading world-class research into the next generation of optical networks and sensing systems that will power ICT-based social solutions for years. We advance globally acknowledged innovation by engaging in visionary theoretical research, pioneering experiments, and leading technology field trials. Our work not only foresees the future but also transforms it into today’s reality.

Posts

Distributed fiber optic sensing over readily available telecom fiber networks

/in /by

Distributed Fiber Optic Sensing (DFOS) systems rely on measuring and analyzing different properties of the backscattered light of an optical pulse propagating along a fiber cable. DFOS systems can measure temperature, strain, vibrations, or acoustic excitations on the fiber cable and to their unique specifications, they have many applications and advantages over competing technologies. In this talk we will focus on the challenges and applications of DFOS systems using outdoor grade telecom fiber networks instead of standard indoor or some specialty fiber cables.

Read more

Using Global Fiber Networks for Environmental Sensing

/in /by

We review recent advances in distributed fiber optic sensing (DFOS) and their applications. The scattering mechanisms in glass, which are exploited for reflectometry-based DFOS, are Rayleigh, Brillouin, and Raman scatterings. These are sensitive to either strain and/or temperature, allowing optical fiber cables to monitor their ambient environment in addition to their conventional role as a medium for telecommunications. Recently, DFOS leveraged technologies developed for telecommunications, such as coherent detection, digital signal processing, coding, and spatial/frequency diversity, to achieve improved performance in terms of measurand resolution, reach, spatial resolution, and bandwidth. We review the theory and architecture of commonly used DFOS methods. We provide recent experimental and field trial results where DFOS was used in wide-ranging applications, such as geohazard monitoring, seismic monitoring, traffic monitoring, and infrastructure health monitoring. Events of interest often have unique signatures either in the spatial, temporal, frequency, or wavenumber domains. Based on the temperature and strain raw data obtained from DFOS, downstream postprocessing allows the detection, classification, and localization of events. Combining DFOS with machine learning methods, it is possible to realize complete sensor systems that are compact, low cost, and can operate in harsh environments and difficult-to-access locations, facilitating increased public safety and smarter cities.

Read more

Availability Analysis for Reliable Distributed Fiber Optic Sensors Placement

/in /by

We perform the availability analysis for various reliable distributed fiber optic sensor placement schemes in the circumstances of multiple failures. The study can help the network carriers to select the optimal protection scheme for their network sensing services, considering both service availability and hardware cost.

Read more

Distributed Optical Fiber Sensing Using Specialty Optical Fibers

/in /by

Distributed fiber optic sensing systems use long section of optical fiber as the sensing media. Therefore, the fiber characteristics determines the sensing capability and performance. In this presentation, various types of specialty optical fibers and their sensing applications will be introduced and discussed.

Read more

A Multi-sensor Feature Fusion Network Model for Bearings Grease Life Assessment in Accelerated Experiments

/in /by

This paper presents a multi-sensor feature fusion (MSFF) neural network comprised of two inception layer-type multiple channel feature fusion (MCFF) networks for both inner-sensor and cross-sensor feature fusion in conjunction with a deep residual neural network (ResNet) for accurate grease life assessment and bearings health monitoring. The single MCFF network is designed for low-level feature extraction and fusion of either vibration or acoustic emission signals at multi-scales. The concatenation of MCFF networks serves as a cross-sensor feature fusion layer to combine extracted features from both vibration and acoustic emission sources. A ResNet is developed for high-level feature extraction from the fused feature maps and prediction. Besides, to handle the large volume of collected data, original time-series data are transformed to the frequency domain with different sampling intervals and targeted ranges. The proposed MSFF network outperforms other models based on different fusion methods, fully connected network predictors and/or a single sensor source.

Read more

Semi-supervised Identification and Mapping of Water Accumulation Extent using Street-level Monitoring Videos

/in /by

Urban flooding is becoming a common and devastating hazard, which causes life loss and economic damage. Monitoring and understanding urban flooding in a highly localized scale is a challenging task due to the complicated urban landscape, intricate hydraulic process, and the lack of high-quality and resolution data. The emerging smart city technology such as monitoring cameras provides an unprecedented opportunity to address the data issue. However, estimating water ponding extents on land surfaces based on monitoring footage is unreliable using the traditional segmentation technique because the boundary of the water ponding, under the influence of varying weather, background, and illumination, is usually too fuzzy to identify, and the oblique angle and image distortion in the video monitoring data prevents georeferencing and object-based measurements. This paper presents a novel semi-supervised segmentation scheme for surface water extent recognition from the footage of an oblique monitoring camera. The semi-supervised segmentation algorithm was found suitable to determine the water boundary and the monoplotting method was successfully applied to georeference the pixels of the monitoring video for the virtual quantification of the local drainage process. The correlation and mechanism-based analysis demonstrate the value of the proposed method in advancing the understanding of local drainage hydraulics. The workflow and created methods in this study have a great potential to study other street level and earth surface processes.

Read more

Field Trials of Vibration Detection, Localization and Classification over Deployed Telecom Fiber Cables

/in /by

We review sensing fusion results of integrating fiber sensing with video for machine-learning-based localization and classification of impulsive acoustic event detection. Classification accuracy >97% was achieved on aerial coils, and >99% using fiber-based signal enhancers.

Read more

Simultaneous Sensing and Communication in Optical Fibers

/in /by

We explore two fiber sensing methods which enables coexistence with data transmission on DWDM fiber networks. Vibration detection and localization can be achieved by extracting optical phase from modified coherent transponders. Frequency-diverse chirped-pulse DAS with all-Raman amplification can improve SNR and achieves multi-span monitoring.

Read more

Finite Element Modeling of Pavement and State Awareness Using Fiber Optic Sensing

/in /by

A variety of efforts have been put into sensing and modeling of pavements. Such capability is commonly validated with experimental data and used as reference for damage detection and other structural changes. Finite element models (FEM) often provides a high fidelity physics-base benchmark to evaluate the pavement integrity. On the monitoring of roads and pavements in general, FEM combining with in-situ data largely extends the awareness of the pavement condition, and enhances the durability and sustainability for the transportation infrastructures. Although many studies were performed in order to simulate static stress and strain in the pavement, FEM also show potential for dynamic analysis, allowing to extract both frequency response and wave propagation at any location, including the behavior of the soil on the surroundings. Fiber optical sensing is adopted in this research, which outperforms the traditional sensing techniques, such as accelerometers or strain gauges, given its nature of providing continuous measurement in a relatively less intrinsic fashion. Moreover, the data is adopted to validate and calibrate the FEM with complex material properties, such as damping and viscoelasticity of the pavement as well as other nonlinear behavior of the surrounded soil. The results demonstrate a successful FEM with good accuracy of the waveform prediction.

Read more

Vibration-Based Status Identification of Power Transmission Poles

/in /by

Among the power transmission infrastructures, the low-voltage overhead power lines are specifically critical, due to the complicated roadside environments and the significant number of connections to the end utility users. Maintaining of such a large size grid with mostly wood poles is a challenging task and knowing the operating status and its structural integrity drastically speeds up the routine inspection. Applying a data-driven approach using accelerometer data to analyze the power line-induced vibration to classify different poles within different operational conditions is proposed.Feature creation is the important aspect to improve an accuracy of data-driven algorithms. For this purpose, a time-frequency domain classifier is developed, based on the data collected from two tri-axial accelerometers installed on the wood poles before and after streetlights are on. Data are explored both in time and frequency domain using techniques such as data augmentation and segmentation, averaging, filtering, and principal component analysis. Results of the machine learning classifier clearly shows distinct characteristics among the data collected from different work conditions and different poles. Further exploration of the applied algorithm will be pursued to construct more sophisticated features based on supervised learning to enhance the identification accuracy.

Read more