April 1, 2008 -- Optellios, Inc. announced that its FiberPatrol system has passed the final acceptance test for securing the Qinghai-Tibet railway in China. The company reports that the fiber-optic perimeter intrusion detection system was chosen for final testing after it outperformed all competition in head-to-head engineering trials in September 2007.
Optellios says its FiberPatrol was the only fiber-optic sensor to pass the trials, which it did by demonstrating a 100% accurate intrusion detection with zero false alarms, despite windy conditions and passing trains. The company says its system showed an equally outstanding performance during the final test, which took place at a remote section of the railroad.
The Qinghai-Tibet railroad, completed in 2005 and opened for operation the following year, is the world's highest, reaching a peak altitude of 3.152 miles above sea level. The Qinghai-Tibet Railway Surveillance System project covers the railway section from Golmud, a city in China's Qinghai province, to Lhasa, the capital city of the Tibet Autonomous Region.
The section's total length is 710 miles, 80% of which lies at an altitude of at least 2.5 miles; it includes 45 train stations, multiple tunnels and bridges. The project adopts a range of advanced security and surveillance technologies, providing real-time monitoring of train operation and environmental conditions, ensuring safety of travel.
"We are very impressed by the capabilities and performance of FiberPatrol," says Mr. Fang Jingen, vice president of Qinghai-Tibet Railway Co., an affiliate of the China Ministry of Railway. "We have tested several fiber-optic sensors for railway security and FiberPatrol stood out as the top performer from start to finish."
According to Opetellios, based on distributed fiber-optic technology, the FiberPatrol intrusion detection system can monitor many miles of sensing cable and report accurate GPS location of any intrusion attempt. During the railway testing, GPS coordinates of alarms were sent to a video verification system, provided and integrated by TeraMage Technologies (Beijing), which then used the coordinates to automatically control security cameras. The integrated system brought real-time video, capturing the scene of intrusion, to the front panel of the monitoring station.
"FiberPatrol has made it possible to monitor a large length of perimeter by accurately detecting intrusion location and virtually eliminating all false alarms," comments Alvin Guo, executive VP and CTO of TeraMage, which has been offering Optellios products on the Chinese market since the two companies signed a distribution agreement in 2005.
"We are excited that FiberPatrol has been accepted as a perimeter intrusion detection solution for a railroad application," concludes Jay Patel, CEO of Optellios. "It was also a rare opportunity in the industry to go head-to-head against the competition in full-scale technical trials. We are proud, but not surprised, that superiority of our technology has been established in such a direct way."