Technical Support

Fiber Sensor Package Design Service

In order for the FBG sensors to be used in harsh environments, a fiber sensor package could provide mechanical protection. This is not only due to fiber itself fragility but also due to the detrimental long-term effect of moisture and potentially mechanical breakage. However, the sensor package will be different for strain, pressure, vibrational, and acceleration measurement. AtGrating provided single FBG fiber sensor design is based on a six-sigma methodological process to compromise the specific parameters.

Fiber Sensing Cable Package Design Service

Arrayed FBG based fiber sensing cable can be used for temperature or thermal profile measurement. In a harsh environment, a fiber sensing array package cable could provide mechanical protection. The fiber sensing cable with FBG sensors of 10-500 can be distributed to a length of a few kilometers or miles. The most common sensing array application is for thermal profile measurement from a specific environment, where the electronic sensors, such as thermocouples, are highly limited or even don’t work at all. 

Fiber Sensing Instrument Design Service

When a customer has a specific application with a certain number of FBGs is packaged as a sensing cable, sensing instrumentation can be constructed by multiplexing different sensing cables either with a multi-channel optical sensing interrogator or with a single-channel optical sensing interrogator plus a multi-channel optical switcher. The static and dynamic signals from FBG sensors can be analyzed either with time-division or with the wavelength-division multiplexing method. 

Sensing Software Design Service

Sensing software's basic function is to acquire the raw signal from an optical interrogator that has connected sensors and sensing cables. When sensing instrumentation is based on the wavelength multiplexing method, a multi-channel optical sensing interrogator plus a multi-channel optical switcher may be more than enough to provide conventional sensing detection. The software can be designed to detect both static and dynamic signals from optical sensors and can provide basic data process functions, and online displays. More than that, data online process, data fusion, and analysis can be embedded into the software functionality. In addition, the alarming signal can be produced if the measured parameter has out of low- or up-limit range. AtGrating provided sensing software design is based on LabVIEW or C++ language to provide low-cost software for customer immediate application. 

Field Installation Service

When a customer has requested a specific sensing solution, AtGrating not only provides sensor and instrument designs, but also sensor package, prototypes, performance validation, qualification, and field installation. With great experience in field deployment, AtGrating can provide time and cost manageable service to help customers installing sensors and sensing instruments worldwide. To early plan the field installation service, it will be critical to learn application environment conditions, geometrical constraints, compliance requirements, accessibility, and engineering support from the customer site. In some cases, AtGrating can work with sub-contractor(s) to prepare the installation needed parts, penetration preparation, and provide field installation diagrams and drawings for customer engineer review. 

Sensing Data Analysis Service

Depending upon the data acquisition rate and the number of the sensing points the obtained field data could be a huge amount that could overflow the DAQ hard drive. On the other hand, several interesting sensing parameters may need to be combined together for industrial process control and optimization. One method is to use “Data Fusion” processes which are often categorized as low, intermediate, or high, depending on the processing stage at which fusion takes place. Low-level data fusion combines several sources of raw data to produce new raw data. The expectation is that fused data is more informative and synthetic than the original inputs. Another method is called “Data Integration” which is used to describe the combining of data, whereas data fusion is integration followed by reduction or replacement. Data integration might be viewed as a set combination wherein the larger set is retained, whereas fusion is a set reduction technique with improved confidence. Boston Instruments will leverage existing experience in the sensor data process for analyzing customer-specific data of monitoring and measurement.