Following 1960's telecommunication industrial advancement the fiber optical sensing technology has been developing for several decades. The invented fiber sensors were basically based on intrinsic and extrinsic light reflection, transmission and interference properties. Fiber Bragg grating fabrication technology was invented in 1980's but the fiber Bragg grating based sensing technology was quickly developed for Oil filed and downhole intelligent wells production monitoring application after 2000. Nowadays, fiber Bragg grating and Fabry-Perot interferometer are two dominated fiber optical sensing technologies that have been widely tested in various industrial process, infrastructure health condition, and industrial & University R&DE. However, it is still long-way to go as being an enabling technology for various engineering applications.
BI's Research, Development, and Engineering
Despite of huge success in using fiber sensing technology in different industrial sections, this sensing technology still needs to be more robust, low-cost, and the improved performance. On the other hand, although FBG-based sensor can be used to measure many physical measurands, such as pressure, temperature, strain, vibration, displacement, acceleration, chemicals, industrial gases, and tilt etc., we still face great challenges in the sensor packages for harsh environmental deployment. We can regard existing single-measurand sensor package and diverse sensing instruments as the first-generation products or fruits. Boston Instruments' interest is in second-generation sensors and sensing technology R&DE, which have following features:
- Multi-measurand or Multi-function;
- Plug-and-play based sensing module;
- Robust sensing module package;
- Flexible adhesive bonding material for fiber sensor package;
- Miniaturized and module-based multi-channel optical sensing interrogator;
- Distributed & quasi-distributed hybrid sensing instruments;
- Intelligent algorithm and software;
- Industrial standard optical sensing instrument;
- High-bandwidth data transmission via wireless and Internet;
- Flexible data fusion and integration.
Another specific R&D field relates to:
Business Strategy
BI's focus is on the novel design and integration on existing and newly innovations into a unique engineering solution that could fill current technology gaps for solving various customers’ challenging issues, partnered with industrial business, Universities, and technologists.
Following are BI's currently interested R&DE areas:
Sensor Package Technology
To meet different sensing demands from industrial and University R&DE, Boston Instruments will look for external collaboration for co-developing new sensing technology. If you have interest in a partnership or in a specific application, please contact our Engineering Services at: services@bostoninstruments.com