Distributed fiber optic sensor placement procedure

1. A distributed fiber optic sensor placement method comprising:

providing a fiber optic network comprising a set of nodes and a set of fiber optic links defined by G(V, E) where G is the fiber optic network, V is the set of nodes, and E is the set of links;

for each node in G(V, E),

determine all possible sensing routes (all_route_set) in the fiber optic network; and

determine the minimum set of sensing routes in the alt_route_set that fully cover all the links in the fiber optic network; and

determining sensor placement locations to be at either one of two ends of a sensing route that is within the minimum set of sensing routes in the alt_route_set that fully cover all the links in the fiber optic network; and

deploying the sensors at the sensor placement locations so determined.

2. The method of claim 1 further comprising:

determining a set of possible sensing routes for a given node in the fiber optic network when there is no existing sensing route defined for the given node.

3. The method of claim 2 wherein a route is only added to all_route_set when that route simultaneously contains no loop and a distance of the route is less than a sensing range limit of the sensor being placed.

4. The method of claim 1 further comprising determining a set of possible sensing routes for a given node in the fiber optic network when there are existing sensing route defined for the given node.

5. The method of claim 1 wherein the fiber optic network include a network controller that is configured to execute the method and a user configurable fiber optic connector switch that optically connects a sensor to a node.

6. The method of claim 5 wherein the network controller communicates network configuration instructions to the nodes included in the fiber optic network.

7. The method of claim 6 wherein the nodes receive the network configuration instructions and in response locally configure including placement of sensor(s) and/or fiber optic links through the fiber optic connector switch.

8. The method of claim 7 wherein the sensors receive the network configuration information and configure respective sensing settings and data reporting.

9. The method of claim 1 wherein the number of sensors deployed is defined by:

min

:

∑

s

,

d

∈

V

θ

s

,

d

for the network infrastructure G(V, E), where V is the set of nodes; E is the set of links; R: the sensing range limit of a given sensor; d ij : the distance of link (i, j); w ij : the distance of the weight of link (i, j), which is obtained by d ij /R;

wherein the following Boolean variables are determined:

θ s,d : 1 if a sensor is deployed at node S, with termination point at node d, where s, d∈V; 0 otherwise;

r s,d,ij : 1 if the sensing fiber route between S and d passes though link (i,j), where r s,d,ij ∈V; 0 otherwise;

and the following constraints are considered:

∑

i

,

j

∈

V

r

s

,

d

,

i

,

j

·

w

i

,

j

≤

θ

s

,

d

,

∀

s

,

d

∈

V

∑

s

,

d

∈

V

r

s

,

d

,

i

,

j

+

∑

s

,

d

∈

V

r

s

,

d

,

j

.

i

≥

1

,

∀

i

,

j

∈

V

∑

i

,

j

∈

V

r

s

,

d

,

i

,

j

-

∑

i

,

j

∈

V

r

s

,

d

,

j

,

i

=

[

θ

s

,

d

i

=

s

-

θ

s

,

d

i

=

d

∀

s

,

d

∈

V

.

0

otherwise