OptaSense: Fibre Optic Distributed Acoustic Sensing for Border Monitoring

Abstract

The OptaSense ^® Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) system is an acoustic and seismic sensing capability that uses simple fibre optic communications cables as the sensor. Using existing or new cables, it can provide low-cost and high-reliability surface crossing and tunnel construction detection, with power and communications services needed only every 80-100 km. The technology has been proven in worldwide security operations at over one hundred locations in a variety of industries including oil and gas pipelines, railways, and high-value facility perimeters - a total of 100,000,000 kilometre-hours of linear asset protection. The system reliably detects a variety of border threats with very few nuisance alarms. It can work in concert with existing border surveillance technologies to provide security personnel a new value proposition for fighting trans-border crime. Its ability to detect, classify and locate activity over hundreds of kilometres and provide information in an accurate and actionable way has proven OptaSense to be a cost-effective solution for monitoring long borders. It has been scaled to cover 1500 km controlled by a single central monitoring station in pipeline applications.