Determination of the path of optic cable using the high-sampled data of the distributed acoustic sensing

Hobin Lim, Byoungjoon Yoon, Sang-Jin Choi, & Kwan-Hee Yun

Submitted September 7, 2025, SCEC Contribution #14447, 2025 SCEC Annual Meeting Poster #TBD

Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) technology leverages existing fiber optic cables to measure seismic waves, enabling high-resolution data acquisition at fine spatial intervals and high sampling rates. This capability makes DAS particularly useful for monitoring small-magnitude earthquakes. However, effective utilization of DAS data requires precise localization of the fiber optic cable. To address this, we implemented a grid search algorithm to estimate the cable’s location relative to the first node by minimizing the sum of squared residuals. Pseudo-automatic measurements of arrival times, aligned to 0 s at the first node, were employed in this process. We validated our method using a fiber optic cable provided by the Korea Electric Power Corporation Research Institute (KEPRI), as its known path allows for effective assessment of accuracy. An N5225B interrogator from AP Sensing GmbH was used for data collection, with a sampling rate of 2,000 Hz and a spatial resolution of 5 m. The fiber optic cable consists of 7,031 nodes, corresponding to a total length of 35,150 m. Our results show that the estimated cable path generally follows the true path, with a scale discrepancy of approximately 20%. This method is expected to enhance localization accuracy for DAS applications, particularly in cases where the cable path is unknown, by narrowing the search region for tap tests.

Citation
Lim, H., Yoon, B., Choi, S., & Yun, K. (2025, 09). Determination of the path of optic cable using the high-sampled data of the distributed acoustic sensing. Poster Presentation at 2025 SCEC Annual Meeting.

Related Projects & Working Groups
Seismology