Tokyo based Yokogawa Electric Corporation has announced that it has started work on an optical fiber sensing technology research project with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s (JAXA) Space Exploration Innovation Hub Center (“Exploration Hub”).
Yokogawa was awarded this collaborative research project based on a proposal titled “Distribution Measurement of the High and Low Temperature Region and Pseudo Real-time Measurement by Random Access with Brillouin Optical Correlation Domain Measurements”, a technique invented by Professor Kazuo Hotate, President of the Toyota Technical Institute and former Vice President of The University of Tokyo.
Yokogawa’s adopted proposal falls under the optical fiber sensing technology research and development category, which is one of the idea incubation research topics for which the Exploration Hub solicited proposals. In this field, Yokogawa offers the DTSX, a fiber optic distributed temperature sensor that is suitable for installation even in harsh environments. Used in fire detection and maintenance applications, this product helps to ensure safe and reliable operations in all kinds of plants and infrastructure facilities.
By utilizing optical fiber sensors, Brillouin optical correlation domain measurement technology will be further refined to not only perform measurement of temperature distribution across a wide temperature range in a specific area, but to also develop a random-access function that can selectively change the measurement points, thereby allowing the simultaneous and near real-time measurement of temperature in multiple locations to support applications such as abnormality detection.
Established in 2015, JAXA’s Exploration Hub brings together specialists in different fields from companies, universities, and research institutes to foster research in Japan on the construction of innovative technologies and systems for space exploration. The results obtained through this joint research will be used to resolve technical issues not only in space, but also on the ground.
