Section outline


  • SUBMERSE (SUBMarine cablEs for ReSearch and Exploration) is an innovative EU-funded project that aims to turn existing submarine telecommunication cables into an international fiber optic sensing network, providing near real-time data flows to monitor the Earth and its systems.

    Within this scope, several fibers have been instrumented with ΙΈ-OTDR interrogators, which are capable of deriving apparent strain measures from phase changes of Rayleigh back-scattering. The interpretation of DAS data can be challenging, as Rayleigh-based systems are inherently sensitive not only to longitudinal strain, but also to temperature and pressure. Furthermore, the finite size of the sensing elements can introduce physical filtering on specific wavelengths, and varying sensitivity that depends on the azimuth from which energy is reaching the fiber. The acquisition parameters (sampling rate, gauge length, overlap) must be balanced for every experiment, considering not only the scientific.

    What this training session is about
    An introduction to Rayleigh-based Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) to take a researcher from knowing nothing about DAS to accessing high-volume data in the cloud. This training session covers the physics of the sensors, the logic of the metadata, and the modern cloud-computing tools required to work with the data without downloading it all.