Wide area seismic detection
First Claim
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1. A method of monitoring an area of interest for an earthquake comprising:
- operating at least one distributed acoustic sensor interrogator unit connected to an optical fibre communications infrastructure to provide fibre optic distributed acoustic sensing on one or more optical fibres of said optical fibre communications infrastructure,wherein each distributed acoustic sensor interrogator unit is connected to a respective optical fibre within a respective optical fibre bundle of said communications infrastructure and at least one other optical fibre of said optical fibre bundle is connected to a communications node operating to transfer data which is not related to monitoring the area of interest via the optical fibre bundle; and
processing signals detected by said at least one distributed acoustic sensor interrogator unit to detect signals indicative of an earthquake.
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Abstract
A method for monitoring for seismic events by interrogating an optic fiber which forms part of an existing communications infrastructure to provide distributed acoustic sensing (DAS). The signals provided by the distributed sensing provide measurements at each of a plurality of discrete portions along the fiber, which may be many tens of kilometers in length. Warning or measurement and consequently prediction of seismic activity can be provided by collecting data over a wide area, without the need to deploy a correspondingly large fiber network.
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Citations
18 Claims
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1. A method of monitoring an area of interest for an earthquake comprising:
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operating at least one distributed acoustic sensor interrogator unit connected to an optical fibre communications infrastructure to provide fibre optic distributed acoustic sensing on one or more optical fibres of said optical fibre communications infrastructure, wherein each distributed acoustic sensor interrogator unit is connected to a respective optical fibre within a respective optical fibre bundle of said communications infrastructure and at least one other optical fibre of said optical fibre bundle is connected to a communications node operating to transfer data which is not related to monitoring the area of interest via the optical fibre bundle; and processing signals detected by said at least one distributed acoustic sensor interrogator unit to detect signals indicative of an earthquake. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16)
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17. A method of monitoring for seismic events comprising;
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interrogating a plurality of optical fibres with optical pulses so as to provide a plurality of optical fibre distributed acoustic sensors, each optical fibre distributed acoustic sensor producing a measurement signal from each of a plurality of discrete longitudinal sensing portions of said fibre; monitoring said measurement signals from said plurality of distributed acoustic sensors for seismic activity wherein said plurality of optical fibres are part of an existing communications infrastructure provided for the purpose of communicating data not related to seismic monitoring wherein at least one fibre configured such that at least part of said fibre runs in a different direction to at least part of another fibre; and interrogating at least one further optical fibre with optical pulses so as to provide at least one optical fibre distributed acoustic sensor, wherein said at least one further optical fibre does not form part of said communication infrastructure and which is arranged in a location solely for the purposes of distributed acoustic sensing.
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18. A method of monitoring for seismic events comprising
interrogating at least one optical fibre with optical pulses so as to provide at least one optical fibre distributed acoustic sensor, each optical fibre distributed acoustic sensor producing a measurement signal from each of a plurality of discrete longitudinal sensing portions of said fibre; - and
monitoring said measurement signals from said at least one distributed acoustic sensor for seismic activity wherein said at least one optical fibre is part of an existing communications infrastructure provided for the purpose of communicating only data not related to seismic monitoring, wherein monitoring said measurement signals from said at least one distributed acoustic sensor for seismic activity comprises detecting an occurrence of an earthquake and wherein said at least one optical fibre is deployed in an area of interest including a population centre and the method comprises, upon detecting the occurrence of an earthquake, providing an earthquake warning alarm to the population centre.
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Specification