Testing performance and reliability of fiber optic sensing system for long-term monitoring

摘要

Establishing and testing the performance of a monitoring system designed for long-term applications presents some challenges that do not always apply to other measurement instruments. The evolution of the main measurement parameters must be evaluated over long periods of time and the reliability and failure-rate must be estimated in a statistically sound procedure. When establishing testing procedures for any system it is important to achieve three goal: the procedures must be based on traceable international standards, the procedures must be reproducible by the system users or third-parties testing authorities and the tests should be applicable to different measurement systems to allow a fair comparison of the respective performances. This contribution describes the main procedures used to test the compliance of SMARTEC's SOFO system components to the published specifications. It also offers a general overview of some issues related to the testing of long-term system performances.