The project implementation can be divided into two steps. The first of these included the specialist employment process and the training organization. The second one was related to the market research, the precision of system parameters, the concept of the system and the development of the future product strategy.
Firstly, the work began with the recruitment procedure. An open competition for the position of Associate Innovation was created. A recruitment committee was established that was responsible for the recruitment process. Taking into account the applicant's full compliance with the assessment criteria, the selection committee decided to accept the candidate. Then, core and tailored trainings were organised. A total of 4 three-day core trainings were completed in Berlin (2 times), Munich and Madrid. The core training included industrial innovation and business management. The tailored training program was mainly related to specialized fiber optics technology and their business capabilities. The training has strengthened technical, business and managerial skills.
The implementation of the second step of the project started with the market research of sensors and consumer needs. Of all the interesting new opportunities that fiber-optic sensors can bring, the main market trends and needs are focused on the real-time identification of acoustic events, and temperature monitoring systems. Distributed Acoustic Sensor (DAS) technology allows transforming a single optical fiber into a “distributed microphone”, featuring thousands of sensing points (virtual microphones) along tens of kilometers of fiber. By sending a pulsed beam into the fiber and analyzing the changes in the backscattered light, we are able to continuously address and locate changes in the current state of every single sensing point along the entire fiber link. The intrinsic fast response of this sensing technology allows real-time measuring of sound and/or vibrations of frequencies up to several kilohertz, which serves to characterize the events taking place along the sensing range.
The final stage of the project was to develop a strategy for further product development. InPhoTech’s strategy when facing a ground-breaking project is to develop the technology for a specific need, tailoring the product to the customers need. Especially, among the applications where DAS functionalities are extremely advantageous, one can find:
− Border control and military applications
− Civil infrastructures: Telecom, energy, water, and transportation
− Oil & Gas: Pipeline integrity, refinery monitoring
− Residential areas surveillance
