Future Fibre Technologies’ new AURA product detects intrusions on fences or in the ground

According to Bill Evenson, vice president at the company’s U.S. headquarters in Mountain View, CA, the FFT AURA can detect intrusions on most types of fences or can be buried covertly in the ground across open areas to detect footsteps. The technology can also detect intrusions along buried assets and in data cable infrastructures.

Applications for the AURA product are said to include the protection of military bases, government facilities, critical infrastructure sites, open areas, buried assets or data cable infrastructure. In addition, it can be used to protect critical sites that require continuous operation in the event of a damaged or cut sensor cable.

A low total cost of operation (TCO), says Evenson, results from a number of key benefits, which include simple installation; maintenance free operations; powerful interfacing options through FFT CAMS to other FFT and third party products; high resilience and high availability -- which enables the AURA to continue to work up to the point of a sensor cable cut. When configured bi-directionally, the sensor cable will continue to work to both sides of the cut point, providing full single-cut protection.

AURA can also pinpoint the precise location of events to within six meters (about 20 feet) or better, said Evenson. And all of this is accomplished with no electronics or power in the field.

As a highly sensitive distributed acoustic sensing system, FFT AURA sends a pulse of laser light along a single mode fiber optic sensor cable, then monitors the light reflected back for any variations. It can detect the smallest vibration, movement or pressure acting on the perimeter fence to which the sensor is attached, or the ground in which it is buried. Subsequent analysis can determine different events within the detected signal, differentiating between potential intrusions and environmental noise, removing nuisance events while retaining legitimate intrusion information.

Future Fibre Technologies, whose home base is in Australia, also maintains offices in the UK, India and Dubai. The company is very active in protecting gas and oil pipelines, power plants and other critical infrastructure. Its portfolio of related products includes FFT’s Secure Fence, Secure Link, Secure Pipe, Secure Point, Secure Zone and FFT CAMS. The company is two-time winner of Best Perimeter Protection System in GSN’s annual homeland security awards program.