This project transversally targets a huge variety of consumer and industrial sensing applications though a distributed sensing technology that can become a widespread nerve system in smart city environments, smart home/household monitoring and utility and services distribution.
SLAM-DAST goal is to develop, prototype and demonstrate, both in civil/industrial and especially in household/smart-city case studies, a new, cost-effective, Smart LightwAve Multi-modal Distributed Acoustic Strain and Temperature photonic sensing system (SLAM-DAST), which will integrate: - Distributed Temperature and mechanical deformation (Strain) Sensing (DTSS) and - Distributed Acoustic vibrations optical Sensing (DAS).
Adding sensors makes “smart” homes, household and infrastructures supporting the everyday life of millions of consumers (power, water, gas, transportation, urban) and brings new advantages by optimizing the usage of the resources, reducing wastes, preventing accidents, improving health, reducing social costs and saving on maintenance and repair.
Conventional electronic sensors have open issues (i.e. installation costs & time, power supply, communication range, reliability, durability, …) that at present prevent a quick diffusion of the “smart” home & city concepts. This project solves the open issues by delivering the product SLaM-DAST, a new disruptive interrogator equipment that can turn existing optical fibre networks into millions of sensors for SOUNDS, TEMPERATURE and DEFORMATION and fill a larger gap towards the mass-adoption of smart cities and smart infrastructures.
In addition, SLaM-DAST solves the open issues of many “smart infrastructure” applications:
- any optical fibre immediately becomes an array of thousands costless passive sensor (no power supply);
- allows urban range coverage (10-100km range) and meter-level granularity (1-10m resolution);
- is intrinsically safe & explosion proof (no sparks or overheat even if damaged);
- is immune from interferences, high voltage, strong magnetic fields & lightening;
- ensures long-term durability because the fibre is extremely resistant to corrosion, water, moisture & chemicals.