• Technical Conference:  30 March – 03 April 2025
  • Exhibition: 01 – 03 April 2025
  • Moscone Center, San Francisco, California, USA

Short Courses

SC451 - Optical Fiber Sensors: Principles & Applications

Monday, 31 March
13:30 - 17:30 (Pacific Time (US & Canada), UTC - 08:00)

Short Course Level: Advanced Beginner and Intermediate

Instructor:

Alexis Méndez, MCH Engineering, LLC, USA
Andres Chevarria, Luna Inc., USA

This short course will be held in person only. Please check your email for information on the location where this short course will be held. If you need assistance please visit the Info Desk by registration.
Short Course Description:

This course describes optical fiber sensing principles and technology, as well as the associated specialty fiber types and components required for their system integration. A broad overview of diverse applications is made with a particular emphasis on oil & gas applications.

The course is divided into two parts.  Part I provides an introduction to optical fiber sensors (FOS), their operating principles, different types, and associated required components (such as light sources, detectors, couplers, polarizers, etc.).  Both, single-point sensors –based on Fabry Perot cavities, fiber Bragg gratings, Long-Period gratings and others—as well as distributed ones,  based on Rayleigh, Raman and Brillouin scattering,  will be discussed.  The second part of the course introduces participants to the practical utilization of fiber sensing technology by reviewing its use in real-life applications for distributed parameter sensing in the oil and gas industry with a primary focus on DTS (distributed temperature sensing) and DAS (distributed acoustic sensing) for oil and gas wellbore monitoring.  The advantages and benefits of DTS and DAS systems for asset surveillance will be reviewed, along with the sensors, fibers, cables, installation equipment and procedures needed to integrate, install and operate them. 

Short Course Benefits:

This course should enable you to:

  • Describe the operating principles, characteristics and advantages of fiber optic sensors.
  • Learn the required components necessary to make complete fiber sensing systems.
  •   Review a wide range of fiber sensor types – such as Fabry Perot (FP), Fiber Bragg grating (FBG), Long-Period Gratings (LPG), distributed sensing systems based on Raman, Brillouin and Rayleigh scattering, for DTS (distributed temperature sensing), DSS (Distributed Strain Sensing) and DAS (distributed acoustic
  • Understand how multiple sensors can be multiplexed and sensor networks formed using wavelength division
  • Gain an overall view of the fiberoptic sensing industry and its trends by reviewing a broad variety of real-life, distributed fiber optic sensing (DFOS) applications in optical network monitoring, oil & gas, civil & geotechnical engineering, transportation, security, aerospace and others;  with a primary focus on how are being used to monitor wellbore environments.

 

Short Course Audience:

This course is intended for technical managers, scientists, engineers, technicians and students who wish to learn about optical fiber sensing technology and review their operating principles and associated applications.  The course is also suitable to gain an overview of the field for marketing and technical personnel wishing to examine prospects in the optical sensing area. 

Instructor Biography:

Alexis Méndez is President of MCH Engineering LLC, and has over 25 years of experience in optical fiber technology, sensors and instrumentation.  He was the former Group Leader of the Fiber Optic Sensors Lab within ABB Corporate Research (USA), working on the development of new fiber optic sensing systems for electric utility and oil & gas applications.  He also was Director of Engineering Senisng Solutions at Micron Optics Inc.  He has written over 75 technical publications, holds 5 US patents and is recipient of an R&D 100 award.  He is member of OSA, a SPIE Fellow, editor of the Specialty Optical Fibers Handbook, co-author of SPIE’s “Fiber Optical Sensors Book—Fundamentals & Applications, 4th Ed.”, as well as Series Editor of the CRC Fiber Optic Sensors book series.  He is also VP of the IEEE Fiber Optic Sensors Standards Committee, and was past chair of the International Optical Fiber Sensors Conference (OFS-18). Dr. Mendez holds a PhD. degree in Electrical Engineering from Brown University (1992).

Andres Chavarria is Technical Director of Distributed Fiber Sensing at LUNA Inc, and has over 20 years of experience on engineering sensing fiber optic sensing solutions for geophysical, earth science and infrastructure monitoring applications.  He was a former Director of Technology at OptaSense where he was responsible for technical support of fiber optic sensing applications in the geophysical and Oil & Gas sectors. He was also a Geophysical Processing Manager at SR2020 and Paulsson.  Dr. Chavarria holds a B.Sc in seismic engineering from the National University (UNAM) in Mexico, and a PhD. degree in Geophysics from Duke University.