Patent ID: 11867541
Assignee: OPTASENSE HOLDINGS LIMITED
Field: Transport (Mechanical engineering)
Classification: CPC G  B | IPC B  G

Claim 18:
19. An apparatus, comprising;
a distributed fibre optic sensor configured to interrogate an optical fibre deployed in an area of interest to detect measurement signals at each of a plurality of sensing channels of said optical fibre, wherein the optical fibre is deployed to run along a path of at least part of at least one rail track; and
a processor, configured to:
take at least one set of measurement signals acquired over a period of time in response to at least one event of interest of a known type;
for the or each set of measurement signals, determine a first parameter of each of the measurement signals, compare the determined first parameters for different sensing channels with one another, identify measurement signals wherein the determined first parameters differ by less than a defined amount as being associated with one another and form at least one association matrix indicative of the sensing channels that are determined to be associated with one another;
acquire a further set of measurement signals over a period of time corresponding to data acquired from the optical fibre distributed acoustic sensor in response to a further unknown event of interest; and
process said further set of measurement signals based on said at least one association matrix to determine whether the same sensing channels are associated with one another to determine whether said further event of interest is of the known type, wherein the at least one association matrix comprises a set of measurement signals indicative of known events of interest, wherein the known events of interest comprise at least one of: a train on a first track, a train on a second track, a train passing event, a fault in a track, a break in the track, or a flooded track.