The UK's National Grid has selected EXFO to provide monitoring for its ongoing fiber network health assessment.
National Grid has deployed an overhead fiber optic operational telecommunications network across its electricity transmission infrastructure that carries critical information essential for secure and efficient utility operations. EXFO will measure, analyze, and report results from an 80 km span of the National Grid network -- in one of the most challenging areas of the UK for weather issues – over a 12-month period. Deployment of test equipment and Intellisense devices got underway in October 2022.
EXFO said its technology will help assess the operational condition of the fiber network, while predicting its remaining technical lifespan and identifying potential points of weakness or failure. EXFO will also collect data from Intellisense Systems micro weather station (MWS) Internet of Things (IoT) devices being deployed to measure the specific environmental impact of wind, humidity and meteorological events. EXFO's Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based analytics solution will amalgamate and correlate data from both the fiber optic network and weather system inputs, and dynamically predict, detect, and prevent outages and impairments in the network that might otherwise go unnoticed.
- EXFO's optical time domain reflectometer (OTDR) fiber monitoring units are being deployed at key nodes on the fiber optic network to monitor its optical transmission characteristics and measure its health and condition.
- Data inputs from both the fiber monitoring units and the Intellisense micro weather station devices will feed into EXFO's SensAI platform which classifies, correlates and groups abnormal events affecting network performance.
- The UK's operational telecommunications network is part of the country's Critical National Infrastructure (CNI) and has been operating for over 30 years.
