Protecting fiber-optic links from third party intrusion using distributed acoustic sensors

A major cause of faults in optical communication links is related to unintentional third party intrusions (normally related to civil/agricultural works) causing fiber breaks or cable damage. Distributed acoustic sensors can be used to detect these threats to the fiber-optic infrastructure before they cause damage to the infrastructure and proactively re-route the traffic towards links were no threat is detected. In this talk we will review our recent progress on distributed acoustic sensing and will provide some key considerations for the deployment of these systems in connection with their use in the protection of optical networks.