US 12,130,175 B1
Method of using crowd-sourced echo location pings to detect fiber locations using distributed acoustic sensing
John Valdez, Copper Canyon, TX (US); and Erwin Wardojo, McKinney, TX (US)
Assigned to FRONTIER COMMUNICATIONS HOLDINGS, LLC, Dallas, TX (US)
Filed by FRONTIER COMMUNICATIONS HOLDINGS, LLC, Dallas, TX (US)
Filed on Jun. 10, 2024, as Appl. No. 18/738,936.
Int. Cl. G01H 9/00 (2006.01); G01V 8/24 (2006.01); G01D 5/353 (2006.01)
CPC G01H 9/004 (2013.01) [G01V 8/24 (2013.01); G01D 5/35361 (2013.01)] 20 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
1. A system for determining a location of an optical fiber, the system comprising:
a computing device in a vehicle configured to (i) transmit an acoustic signal having one or more properties that identify the vehicle, and (ii) transmit an indication of a location of the vehicle to a server device;
an optical fiber configured to transmit a light signal;
an optical detector coupled to an endpoint of the optical fiber, wherein the optical detector is configured to detect a reflected light signal corresponding to at least a portion of the transmitted light signal that is reflected due to the acoustic signal; and
the server device communicatively coupled to the optical detector, wherein the server device is configured to:
receive an indication of the reflected light signal from the optical detector;
analyze one or more properties of the reflected light signal to identify one or more properties of the acoustic signal and identify the vehicle that transmitted the acoustic signal; and
determine a location of the optical fiber based on the location of the vehicle.