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

Claim 0:
1. A method of distributed fibre optic sensing, comprising;
performing distributed fibre optic sensing so as to generate at least one set of measurement signals over a period of time from each of a plurality of sensing channels of an optical fibre in response to at least one event of interest of a known type, wherein the optical fibre is deployed to run along a path of at least part of at least one rail track;
for the or each set of measurement signals, determining a first parameter of each of the measurement signals, comparing the determined first parameters for different sensing channels with one another, identifying sensing channels where the determined first parameters differ by less than a defined amount as being associated with one another and forming at least one association matrix indicative of the sensing channels that are determined to be associated with one another;
performing distributed fibre optic sensing to acquire a further set of measurement signals over a period of time from said sensing channels in response to a further unknown event of interest; and
processing 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.