Distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) instrument, rented by the month
Thousands of strain sensors along one fibre, every half metre, from the same box.
Distributed acoustic sensing reads the strain of the fibre itself, so a telecom cable, a downhole fibre or a cable along a pipe becomes a dense array of vibration sensors. Scatterways delivers quantitative strain, not event flags, in the formats seismologists and well engineers already use.
A pulse of light, a phase back
- The same kind of pulse goes in, thousands of times a second.
- The light that comes back carries a phase, like the hand of a clock, for every half metre.
- When the ground moves, the glass stretches by a few parts per billion and the hand turns.
- Every half metre becomes a vibration sensor; plotted over time, events draw themselves.
In numbers
| Fibre | Single-mode G.652 and G.657, any common APC connector. |
| Range | 40 to 50 km single-ended from one instrument. |
| Channels | 0.41 m native spacing with programmable stacking; gauge length 1 to 40 m in software. |
| Timing | GNSS pulse-per-second in and out, 10 MHz reference in, so several units form one array. |
| Pulse rate | To 20 kHz, range dependent. |
| Data | miniSEED, SEG-Y and HDF5; decimated streams and raw snapshots as standard, continuous raw as an option. |
| Power | Mains or 9 to 36 V DC, about 25 W continuous. |
| Combined | The same box reads temperature on the same fibre, time-shared, when the temperature configuration is fitted. |
Full numbers, with their conditions, on the technical page.
Asked before
- Is it a complete seismometer replacement?
- It is a dense strain array along a line. For earthquakes and near-surface imaging it complements a sparse seismometer network; it does not replace a three-component station at a point.
- Can it run on multimode fibre?
- Acoustics needs single-mode fibre. Temperature runs on either.
- How is the data delivered?
- On a dashboard with a live waterfall, through the API, and as miniSEED and SEG-Y files with station metadata per channel group.
Applications
- Dark-fibre seismology
Can the telecom fibre under the road become a seismic array?
You get Quantitative strain rate on every channel, not event flags.
Read more - Wells
Where is the injected fluid going, and is the well behaving?
You get Time-lapse temperature profiles against the pre-injection baseline, with injection and shut-in periods marked.
Read more - Pipelines and district heating
Where is the leak, before the road sinks? Hot water, cold water or gas.
You get A per-metre temperature baseline for the route, with every persistent deviation located to the half metre.
Read more
Put your fibre to work.
Tell us about your fibre and your question. You get a call, a plan for your site and a monthly price.