Coaxial Cable Distributed Strain Sensing: Methods, Applications and Challenges

Distributed strain sensing is a powerful tool for in-situ structural health monitoring for a wide range of critical engineering infrastructure. Strain information from a single sensing device can be captured from multiple locations simultaneously, offering a reduction in hardware, wiring, installation costs and signal analysis complexity. Fiber optic distributed strain sensor have been the widely adopted approach in this field, but their use is limited to lower strain applications due to the fragile nature of silica fibre. Coaxial cable sensor offers a robust structure that can be adapted into a distributed strain sensor. They can withstand greater strain events and offer greater resilience in harsh environments. This paper presents the development in methodology for coaxial cable distributed strain sensors. It explores the two main approaches of coaxial cable distributed strain sensing such as time domain reflectometry and frequency domain reflectometry with applications. Furthermore, the paper highlights further areas of research challenges in this field such as: the deconvolution of strain and temperature effects from coaxial cable distributed strain sensor measurements, mitigating the effect of dielectric permittivity on accuracy of strain measurements, addressing manufacturing challenges with the partial reflectors for a robust co-axial cable sensor, and adoption of data-driven analysis techniques for interrogating the interferogram to eliminate concomitant measurement effects with respect to temperature, dielectric permittivity, signal to noise ratio, amongst others.