Long-reach DWDM-passive optical fiber sensor network for water level monitoring of spent fuel pool in nuclear power plant

Abstract

This paper presents a passive optical fiber sensor network based on the dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) to remotely monitor the water level of the spent fuel pool in nuclear power plants. In states of emergency, such as a tsunami, safety information must be secured for rapid response, in spite of all power losses in the plant. We consider the proposed passive sensor network to be one of the best solutions that is able to provide the remote (more than tens of kilometers) monitoring station with the highly reliable on-site information. The principle of water level measurement is based on the change of Fresnel reflection power coefficient at sensing units, which are installed according to the water levels in a row. The sensing units that play the role of reflector and modulator at the same time are connected to an arrayed waveguide grating (AWG) for DWDM. By measuring the spectrum of the optical signal transferred from the sensing units, the water level can be determined in real-time. However, in the remote sensing, the system performance can be seriously degraded due to the Rayleigh Back-Scattering (RBS) of the seeded amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) light that is induced at the fiber-optic link. As such, we investigate the effect of RBS on the remote (more than tens of kilometers) sensing performance of the proposed network. Following the theoretical analysis, we propose a simple network configuration to overcome the RBS issue by utilizing two different transmission paths: one for downstream of the ASE seed light, and the other for upstream of the optical signals coming from the sensing units. Based on the proposed configuration, the maximum sensing distance can be increased up to 42.5 km without the support of any optical amplifier.