Distributed Sensing Floor for an Intelligent Environment

This paper reports on the development of a distributed sensing floor using an optical fiber sensor. We introduce an alternative yet simple method to manufacture a distributed sensing floor. This method is based on Brillouin optical correlation domain analysis (BOCDA) technology, which can detect the strain deviation along a fiber caused by pressure events. With suitable computational algorithms, the distributed sensing floor is able to detect the presence of occupants and track them efficiently. In our tests, the success rate of location detection was 96%, and the estimation error for the weight of the occupant was plusmn5 kg. The spatial resolution could be tuned without having to also change the hardware architecture.