Distributed Temperature Sensor

The distributed temperature sensor research at Swinburne University of Technology is performed by the Centre for Atom Optics and Ultrafast Spectroscopy in collaboration with our partners in Tyree Optech and the CRC for Intelligent Manufacturing Systems and Technologies.

The performance of the Sentor 101® system, which is currently under development at Swinburne, is illustrated by the trial data shown below in Fig. 1. In this measurement, taken over a total period of about 600 seconds, a 65ºC temperature step was introduced at the far end of a length of fibre. Outside of the heated zone, the fibre was exposed to a constant room temperature that was independently measured to be 22ºC. The graph shows a 40 m portion of the fibre commencing at 2270 m.

Figure 1: A section of test data starting from 2270 m.

For practical applications, the temperature precision, range resolution and total measurement time must be traded off against each other.

Find more on the relationship between temperature error and range resolution here.

Subject to further research, future Sentor® systems have the potential to measure temperature over a range greater than 10 km, or at intervals as small as 200 mm:

- Improved range resolution can be obtained by optimising the laser pulse characteristics and detector performance to allow faster discrimination of the returning Raman scattered light. A range resolution of 200 mm implies a timing resolution of 2 ns.

- On the other hand, greater total range is achieved by carefully matching the laser wavelength to the optical fibre transmission characteristics and detector sensitivity. In combination with a novel DTS detection strategy, our models suggest that this approach will allow measurements at distances greater than 10 km.