Masters Theses

Date of Award

5-2006

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science

Major

Electrical Engineering

Major Professor

Donald W. Bouldin

Committee Members

Gregory Peterson, Hairong Qi

Abstract

The purpose of this thesis was to research, design, develop and test a novel instrument for detecting fiber optic loop continuity and spatially locating fiber optic breaches. The work is for an active seal system called ReflectoActive™ Seals whose purpose is to provide real time container tamper indication.

A Field Programmable Gate Array was used to implement a loop continuity detector and a spatial breach locator based on a high acquisition speed single photon counting optical time domain reflectometer. Communication and other control features were added in order to create a usable instrument that met defined requirements. A host graphical user interface was developed to illustrate system use and performance.

The resulting device meets performance specifications by exhibiting a dynamic range of 27dB and a spatial resolution of 1.5 ft. The communication scheme used expands installation options and allows the device to communicate to a central host via existing Local Area Networks and/or the Internet.

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