Fiber optic sensor system for stress monitoring in power cables

Monitoring of stress in power cables is of great interest to determine the cable lifetime, especially under rough environmental conditions like in offshore wind energy plants. Standard single mode fibers are generally included in power cables for data transfer. In our approach we developed a sensor device which uses single mode fibers already included in the cables and a short pulse broadband light source. This allows measuring temperature and pressure via time resolved Raman backscattering photon counting as well as monitoring bending and torsion via fiber Bragg gratings.