American telecom operator Verizon and Japanese company NEC have just field testing of a comprehensive system for monitoring the urban environment and events using conventional optical communication lines. No new global investments - all optical cables have long been laid in the ground by Verizon and are used to transmit data on its network. This is the uniqueness of the project: for the first time, the operator used existing optical commercial communication lines to collect data.
Technology seismic data and the temperature environment of optical cables has been used for about 10 years, for example in the field of oil production. In the city, it is tempting to use this technology to monitor traffic and events on the streets, as well as to monitor the condition of urban infrastructure in the form of roads, tunnels, bridges and buildings. In tests by Verizon and NEC, an AI-based monitoring system (convolutional neural network) was able to determine traffic density in traffic, the movement vector and acceleration of individual vehicles, their tonnage, as well as road incidents (collisions and even gunshots). This information will not only help improve traffic flow, but will also help first responders such as police, ambulance and rescue services.
The operating principle of such a monitoring system is based on the analysis of the backscattering of the optical signal (echo) in the fiber-optic cable, when thermal deformations or vibrations introduce physical interference into the communication lines, which is corrected by optical transceivers. If you capture this information with special receivers and analyze it using AI, then you can attach very specific events to each βlistenedβ sector.
Verizon is actively expanding its cable business. It adds about 1400 miles (2253 km) of infrastructure every month. If the service for monitoring the situation on the streets is in demand, Verizon is ready to deploy it throughout the United States where it is present or will be in demand.
Source: 3dnews.ru