Distributed Optical Fiber Sensing Technology for Social Infrastructure Monitoring

Aging of the social infrastructure developed during the high economic growth period is now a major problem, and construction of monitoring systems has become an urgent task. In particular, health-monitoring tests using various sensors are being conducted to prevent collapse of bridges and tunnels due to structural degradation. Additionally, in wake of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, high importance has been placed on realtime monitoring technology for disaster prediction. This article gives an overview of distributed optical fiber sensing and describes OKI’s own work in applying distributed optical fiber sensing technology to social infrastructure monitoring.