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Urban Water Leakage Detection System over Dark Fiber Networks Based on Distributed Acoustic Sensing and Sparse
Vahid Sharif1, Yuanyuan Yao2, Alayn Loayssa1
1Institute of Smart Cities, Department of Electrical, Electronic and Communications Engineering, Universidad Pública de Navarra, Campus de Arrosadia, 31006 Pamplona, Spain.
Sensors (Basel, Switzerland)
|April 14, 2026
Summary
This study introduces an automated urban water leakage detection system using existing dark fiber optic cables. The innovative approach reliably detects and locates leaks, enhancing infrastructure monitoring.
Area of Science:
- Civil Engineering
- Telecommunications Engineering
- Environmental Monitoring
Background:
- Urban water infrastructure faces significant challenges from undetected leaks, leading to water loss and damage.
- Existing leak detection methods often lack the scalability and continuous monitoring capabilities required for comprehensive urban management.
Purpose of the Study:
- To develop and validate an automated architecture for urban water leakage detection using dark fiber optic networks.
- To implement and compare two distinct automatic leakage detection strategies: feature-based metrics and an autoencoder-based anomaly detection technique.
Main Methods:
- Leveraging differential-phase coherent optical time-domain reflectometry (DPC-OTDR) with optical pulse compression for enhanced vibration sensing.
- Implementing frequency-domain analysis to identify leak-induced vibration signatures.
- Utilizing baseline calibration and comparing real-time metrics against historical data for anomaly detection.
- Developing both low-complexity feature-based and autoencoder-based algorithms for continuous monitoring and automated detection.
Main Results:
- Successful demonstration of reliable water leakage detection and localization in a real-world urban field trial over a 17 km sensing fiber.
- Achieved an effective spatial resolution of 2.6 m for leak localization.
- Benchmarking results showed consistent trends when compared with a commercial electro-acoustic leak detector.
Conclusions:
- The proposed dark fiber-based system offers a viable solution for automated, continuous, city-scale water leakage monitoring.
- This technology can complement existing methods, improving the efficiency and effectiveness of urban water management.
- The system's reliance on existing infrastructure minimizes deployment costs and maximizes coverage.
