Railway traffic monitoring using Brillouin distributed sensors

We present the application of a Brillouin distributed sensor for railway traffic monitoring. The field test is performed on the Italian regional line San Severo - Peschici. A single-mode optical fiber was attached along a rail length of about 60 meters. The strain associated to train passage was acquired along the monitored rail length, at 31 Hz acquisition rate and 1-m spatial resolution. The sensor is capable to retrieve useful information in railway traffic monitoring, such as train identification, axle counting, speed detection, and dynamic load calculation.