Snow / water level detection with distributed acoustic sensing integrated ultrasonic device
AssigneeNEC Corporation
InventorsYangmin Ding, YueTing Wang, Yue Tian, Sarper Ozharar
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Abstract
Aspects of the present disclosure describe distributed fiber optic sensing/distributed acoustic sensing (DFOS/DAS) systems, methods, and structures that advantageously provide rainfall intensity measurements along an entire length of a fiber optic sensor. using existing telecommunications optical fiber—which may be part of a multi-fiber, fiber optic cable—that may simultaneously carry live telecommunications traffic. The DFOS/DAS fiber optic sensing is used to obtain vibration and/or sound data from which rainfall intensity measurements may be made along the entire length of the DFOS/DAS fiber optic sensor.
Claims9
A rainfall intensity estimation method operating in a distributed fiber optic sensing/distributed acoustic sensing (DFOS/DAS) system, the DFOS/DAS system comprising:
- an optical sensor fiber;
- a DFOS/DAS interrogator in optical communication with the optical sensor fiber,
- the DFOS/DAS interrogator configured to generate optical pulses, introduce the generated pulses into the optical sensor fiber, and receive backscattered signals from the optical sensor fiber;
- and
- an intelligent analyzer configured to
- analyze the backscattered signals received by the DFOS/DAS interrogator and determine from the backscattered signals, vibrational activity occurring at one or more points along the optical sensor fiber;
- the rainfall intensity estimation method comprising
- operating the DFOS/DAS system and collecting backscattered signals including raindrop-induced vibration data from one or more points along a length of the optical sensor fiber over a period of time while determining rainfall intensity with a rain gauge;
- and
- by the intelligent analyzer;
- associating the raindrop-induced vibration data from one or more points along the length of the optical sensor fiber with the rainfall intensity determined with the rain gauge and determining a rainfall intensity at the one or more points along the length of the fiber optic sensor cable from the raindrop-induced vibration data associated with the rainfall intensity determined with the rain gauge.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.