Start-Up: New Method for Border Control

For several years it’s been a challenge to conduct surveillance in real-time over large distances. Solutions include fences, or security cameras which a person has to sit and watch. Well, now there’s a much simpler solution.
DSIT, a company owned half by the Israeli security-technology giants Rafael and the other half by Acorn Energy and is participating in the iHLS start-up security accelerator, is developing a friendly solution, based on optic fibers.

Let’s take a couple of steps back to understand the development’s meaning – the company has attained a specialty in underwater surveillance over decades of practice. “We found ourselves having all this knowledge in acoustic signal processing, with customers that needed surveillance over their property. When we found out about the acoustic sensor field we discovered that it’s possible to utilize this knowledge in a new and different direction” explained the company’s CTO, Meir Hachami.

This is how it works – the signal processing is done in a box at the end of the fiber. It sends a laser beam through the whole length of the fiber, regardless what that length is. Every small motion changes the optic traits of the fiber and causes part of the beam to come back to the box. The processing reveals many details about the motion, including what caused it and exactly where it happened.
The information is received in the box within seconds and enables a simple solution. Hachami emphasized that the technology is applicable in all sorts of areas: “first of all border control, it’s much simpler than fences which also present a constant reminder of their presence. Besides that, it can be used to find gas leaks, dents in a road or even railway dysfunctions. Every dysfunction makes a different sound, an acoustic signature, once there’s an optic fiber there to detect it, we’ll know what happened and where”.

Source