Sensors

Intelligent measurement is key for modern security implementations. With optical fiber sensors technology you are able to monitor your infrastructure in real-time 24/7. Intruders can be sooner discovered or monitored. The advantages of using optical fiber sensing systems is that no power supply is required in the field, they are EMI/RFI immune, difficult to defeat and detect, simple to install, with high sensitivity and long lifetime.

For example, fiber can be woven into a fence where it will be stressed if someone tries to climb or cut the fence. It can be buried in gravel where weight on the surface will stress the fiber and create loss. Also and be used in electrical and telecom stations and hazardous areas.

Monitoring the health of transportation infrastructures is currently reliant on transportation maintenance teams. Scheduled and periodic inspections on most of the infrastructures are performed by manual and visual operations, which are generally time consuming and costly procedures. The use of the fiber optic sensor technology makes it possible to realize continuous, real time and automatic health monitoring for the transportation infrastructure.

Road

The fiber optic sensors are useful for monitoring the traffic entering and leaving guarded areas, counting traffic on public roads as well as in determining lane occupancy at traffic lights. The sensors may also be used to provide additional information: measure the speed, weight, unbalanced load, wheel base of a vehicle and also to determine the number of axles and vehicle type. The sensors are based on optical fiber or cable, installed inside the asphalt layer of the road, to measure compression or vibrations near the road surface.

Rail

To ensure safe and cost-effective train operations in the transportation industry, it is essential to monitor both traffic levels and the condition of railways. Effective railway maintenance and inspection techniques must provide information about defects in rails and wheels. In the field of railway monitoring, optical fiber sensors are receiving increasing attention. These sensors use optical fibers either as the sensing element itself, or to relay signals from a remote sensor to the signal processing electronics.

Aerospace

Aircraft structures require periodic and scheduled inspection and maintenance operations due to their special operating conditions and the principles of design employed to develop them. Therefore, structural health monitoring has a great potential to reduce the costs related to these operations. Optical fiber sensors applied to the monitoring of aircraft structures provide some advantages over traditional sensors, like their long-term stability, high multiplexing capability and suitability for being embedded into composite materials. Applications also include engine health monitoring, external environmental monitoring and others.

Maritime

Optical fiber sensors have shown their importance and significant potential to monitor ship and marine structural conditions in real‐time bettering performance with conventional techniques.

Structural health monitoring offers important benefits to ship builders, owners and operators. A reduction in ownership cost results from the ability to implement a condition-based maintenance schedule and increased safety follows from the ability continuously to monitor structural integrity.

The nature of the environment in which we live and work, and the precarious state of many aspects of the natural environment, has been a major lesson for scientists over the last few decades. Public awareness of the issues involved is high, and often coupled with a scepticism of the ability of the scientist and engineer to provide an adequate, or even rapid solution to the preservation of the environment before further damage is done, and to achieve this with a minimum of expenditure. Monitoring of the various aspects of the environment, whether it be external or internal to ourselves and involving chemical, physical or biomedical parameters is an essential process for the well-being of mankind and of the individual. Legislative requirements set new standards for measurement and control all around us, which must be met by the most appropriate of the technologies available, commensurate with the costs involved. Optical fiber sensor technology has a major part to play in this process, both to complement existing technologies and to promote new solutions to difficult measurement issues.