Distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) a real-world perspective, requirements, applications, and techniques

This paper presents a brief history of the development of Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) systems utilizing Rayleigh scatter. We then describe some of the technical issues associated with coherent detection DAS topologies before presenting results using novel optical and signal processing techniques employed by Sintela in their ONYX platform. We demonstrate noise floors of <-81dB rads/√Hz and -90dB rads/√Hz operating at 6.4m resolution at 20kHz on 5km of standard SMF- 28e+ fiber and enhanced scatter fiber respectively. The same system when deployed on OFS Scuba-110 ULL fiber exhibiting a loss of 0.146dB/km, is capable of operation over ranges of 180km, with a spatial resolution of only 10m. Novel real-world applications of DAS are discussed before giving the authors perspective on the research and development path which future DAS sensors may take in the short to mid-term in order to address the current limitations observed in current DAS applications.