AST May 2018 Magazine Issue Volume 23 | Page 39

For Volume decades, BEI Communications has been pro- 23 viding fiber-optic based solutions, delivering the technology and support for prisons, nuclear pow- er facilities, international borders, pipe lines and other high-value assets. accurate to within ±15 meters. May 2018 Edition Should the fiber become cut or damaged, the sys- tem controller automatically converts to Optical Time Domain Reflectometer technology and will continue to provide detection on the undamaged Fiber-optic technology is tried and true with portion of fiber. several clients using systems that are decades Additionally, the system is able to store the sound cre- old! ated by the event that triggered the alarm. The problem is the cost involved in providing ex- The attenuation of the fiber-optic signal effectively tended lengths of protection divided into zones that modulates the signal which the system is able to accommodate a targeted response. save as a sound file. Until recently, only governmental agencies could afford to Having such data available will prove invalu- protect perimeters in excess of 1 or 2 kilometers. The engineers at BEI Communi- cations have developed a new, fi- ber-optic based technology which accommodates the protection of great distances at a fraction of the cost of other technologies. able to the end user. RLTDR Reflected Light Time Differential / Optical Time Domain Reflectometer (RLTDR) uses two, solid-state lasers which inject signals into each end of a proprietary, tactical fiber up to 100 kilometers in length. Under normal operations, the system con- troller defaults to Reflected Light Time Dif- ferential where any external affectation on the fiber will produce attenuation which is parsed by the system controller then ana- lyzed by a pc-based program which filters-out false alarms and then provides a graphical representation of the location of the alarm, 37