© Smart Fibres Ltd SmartScan FBG Interrogator Features and Benefits

© Smart Fibres Ltd SmartScan Description SmartScan is a dynamic interrogator for use with fibre Bragg grating (FBG) sensors

© Smart Fibres Ltd SmartScan Operation It contains an electronically tuneable laser which emits light at 400 discrete wavelengths across a 40 nm bandwidth on multiple fibres

© Smart Fibres Ltd SmartScan Operation Optical detectors inside SmartScan then measure the light reflected from each fibre at each of the 400 laser wavelengths, so building up a spectrum of the connected FBGs

© Smart Fibres Ltd Zooming in on one FBG shows the laser tuning points (seen as dots)

© Smart Fibres Ltd SmartScan Operation The peak wavelength of every connected FBG is calculated by SmartScan’s high-speed electronics at the instrument sample rate of 2.5 kHz. This allows dynamic events to be captured…

© Smart Fibres Ltd A dynamic strain event sampled at 2.5 kHz

© Smart Fibres Ltd SmartScan Unique Selling Points Robustness: SmartScan’s light source is a widely tuneable semiconductor laser with the active optical elements contained in a tiny monolithic chip, just a few millimetres long. All other components are passive optical and electronic components. This makes SmartScan very robust and more tolerant of thermal and mechanical influences than swept laser or spectrometer based instruments. The instrumentation has demonstrated its robustness in several military flight trials…

© Smart Fibres Ltd SmartScan Unique Selling Points Robustness: A SmartScan variant was prepared for flight trials, and passed the following pre-flight ground tests: ParameterTested Capability Operating Temperature-15 to +55 °C EMC: Conducted susceptibility and conducted emissions MIL-STD-416E parts CS101 and CS 102 AccelerationVertical-Z (9g) Lateral-X&Y (2.5g) Vibration0.15 (g2/Hz) 0-100Hz 0.10 (g2/Hz) Hz Acoustic NoiseMIL-STD-810F

© Smart Fibres Ltd SmartScan Unique Selling Points It then successfully completed a series of high and low altitude flights on a BAe Systems Hawk, and was assessed to have reached a technology readiness level of 7 out of 9 Robustness:

© Smart Fibres Ltd SmartScan Unique Selling Points Robustness: The mean time before failure (MTBF) prediction of the current, commercial grade SmartScan is given below: Future, enhanced environment variants are expected to offer extended MTBF Environment consideredMTBF Prediction Ground, Fixed, G F 40 o C4.2 years Ground, Benign, G B 40 o C16.1 years By parts count reliability method per MIL_HDBK_217F

© Smart Fibres Ltd SmartScan Unique Selling Points Speed: SmartScan’s agile laser and custom tuning circuits allow data rates of 25 kHz for sequentially sampled FBGs. This makes high speed vibration and other such analyses possible with optical sensors.

© Smart Fibres Ltd SmartScan Unique Selling Points Resolution: SmartScan delivers sub-picometer resolution per sample at 2.5 kHz. This allows over- sampling and averaging to give extraordinary resolution. Example Data Set: SmartScan reading 2mm FBG, 1550 nm, 70%R, 0.7nm FWHM Data AveragingSTDEV Resolution (pm) STDEV Resolution (microstrain) 60s, raw data kHz s, 10 averages – 250 Hz s, 100 averages – 25 Hz s, 1000 averages – 2.5 Hz Source data (6 MB) available to downloaddownload

© Smart Fibres Ltd SmartScan Unique Selling Points Dynamic range: SmartScan’s laser has a high output power, giving a 39 dB dynamic range which allows it to interrogate sensors tens of km away (for instance in a deep subsea well). Sensor attenuation within this dynamic range is compensated by 9x3dB gain stages which are automatically set by the instrument. Uniquely, SmartScan offers automatic per-sensor gain, such that if one or more sensors on a fibre suffer attenuation, they are individually amplified without affecting the other sensor gain settings

© Smart Fibres Ltd SmartScan Summary Below are the current SmartScan capabilities: ParameterCurrent Specification Wavelength Range40 nm Number of fibres1 to 4 Sensors per fibreUp to 16 Scan frequency2.5 kHz all sensors simultaneously up to 25 kHz each sensor in turn ResolutionTyp ⅓ microstrain per sample standard deviation, reducing tenfold with averaging Wavelength Stability5 pm over operating temperature range of -15 to +55 °C Max 20 pm laser wavelength change over 25 years Dynamic range39 dB (27 dB attenuation before performance loss) 9 automatic 3dB gain stages EnclosureStandard for field use, 140 x 110 x 70mm, 0.9 kg Comms InterfaceEthernet

© Smart Fibres Ltd SmartScan Development Roadmap Below are future capabilities planned on the SmartScan development roadmap: ParameterCapability Target on Roadmap Wavelength RangeIncrease to 80 nm ü done Number of fibres8, 16 ü done Scan frequency5 kHz all sensors simultaneously up to 50 kHz each sensor in turn Enclosure and environmental Re-packaging and qualification to suit requirements for: Fixed and rotary wing aerospace deployment ü done Global field deployments Deepwater subsea deployment Comms InterfaceCANBus, ProfiBus etc ü done

© Smart Fibres Ltd End Thank you for your attention