Helios User Manual

Helios Web Interface (HWI)
User manual
Contents
1 Introduction to Helios Web Interface (HWI)............................................................................. 5
2 Logging in to Helios Web Interface (HWI) ................................................................................ 5
3 Main Display Overview ............................................................................................................. 6
3.1 Window Title ..................................................................................................................... 6
3.2 Menu Bar........................................................................................................................... 7
3.3 Data Graph and Waterfall Display Area ............................................................................ 8
3.4 System Control and Status Dashboard .............................................................................. 8
3.5 System Health Pane........................................................................................................... 8
3.6 Data Logging Dashboard ................................................................................................... 9
4 Getting Started ......................................................................................................................... 9
4.1 Connecting the Fibre Sensor ............................................................................................. 9
4.2 Unlocking the Helios System ............................................................................................. 9
4.3 Setting up the Optics Properties ....................................................................................... 9
4.3.1 Setting the PRF......................................................................................................... 10
4.3.2 Setting up the Pulse Width (PW).............................................................................. 11
4.4 Setting up the Basic Fibre Properties .............................................................................. 12
4.4.1 Physical Fibre Length ............................................................................................... 12
4.4.2 Monitor Start ........................................................................................................... 12
4.4.3 Monitor End ............................................................................................................. 13
4.5 Displaying the Raw Fibre Response................................................................................. 13
4.6 Displaying the Default Sound Field.................................................................................. 15
4.7 Manipulating Display Scales in the Sound Field Display.................................................. 15
4.8 Zooming and Panning...................................................................................................... 15
4.9 Manipulating the Colour Map ......................................................................................... 17
4.10 Logging Raw Data .......................................................................................................... 19
4.11 Playback of Raw Data Using the HWI Playback Module................................................ 21
4.11.1 Define a new distance range to display ................................................................. 22
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4.11.2 Define a new time range to display ....................................................................... 23
4.11.3 Play......................................................................................................................... 24
4.11.4 Play from beginning of range ................................................................................. 24
4.11.5 Pause...................................................................................................................... 24
4.11.6 Stop ........................................................................................................................ 24
4.11.7 Loop at end of file .................................................................................................. 24
4.11.8 Fast Forward and Speed Control............................................................................ 24
4.11.9 Seeking to a new start time ................................................................................... 25
4.12 Requirements for Displaying More Advanced Sound Field Types and Creating Alarm
Reports ..................................................................................................................................... 25
4.12.1 The Preprocessing .................................................................................................. 26
4.12.2 Alarm Thresholding................................................................................................ 26
4.12.3 Alarm Indicator Cleaning........................................................................................ 26
4.12.4 Alarm Generation Logic ......................................................................................... 27
5 Advanced Display Features..................................................................................................... 27
5.1 Sound Field Display Types ............................................................................................... 27
5.1.1 Alarm Report Independent Display Types ............................................................... 28
5.1.2 Alarm Report Dependent Display Types .................................................................. 29
5.2 Tracking Velocities on the Waterfall Display ................................................................... 30
5.3 Data Logging Dashboard ................................................................................................. 31
5.3.1 Mounting an External Data Drive............................................................................. 31
5.3.2 Setting up Data Logging Properties.......................................................................... 32
5.3.3 Dynamic Global Data Logging .................................................................................. 32
5.4 System Health Pane......................................................................................................... 32
5.4.1 Processing Module................................................................................................... 33
5.4.2 Alarm Module .......................................................................................................... 33
5.4.3 Data Logging Module ............................................................................................... 33
5.4.4 Reporting Module .................................................................................................... 34
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6 Main Menu ............................................................................................................................. 35
6.1 About this Helios unit ...................................................................................................... 35
6.2 Report a problem ............................................................................................................ 36
6.3 View alarm list ................................................................................................................. 36
6.3.1 Clearing Alarms from Sound Field............................................................................ 37
6.3.2 Filters ....................................................................................................................... 38
6.3.3 Remove Filter ........................................................................................................... 39
6.4 Colour map ...................................................................................................................... 39
6.5 Clear sound field.............................................................................................................. 39
6.6 Clearing alarms from sound field .................................................................................... 39
6.7 Preferences ..................................................................................................................... 39
6.7.1 Time Zone ................................................................................................................ 39
6.7.2 Units ......................................................................................................................... 39
6.7.3 Waterfall Display...................................................................................................... 40
6.8 Printing ............................................................................................................................ 41
6.9 Logging Out of Secure Pages ........................................................................................... 42
7 Admin Menu ........................................................................................................................... 42
7.1 Basic System Setup.......................................................................................................... 43
7.1.1 Hardware Properties................................................................................................ 43
7.1.2 Optical Channel Properties dialog............................................................................ 48
7.1.3 Working with Zones ................................................................................................. 63
7.2 Disturbance Detection and Alarm Setup ......................................................................... 71
7.2.1 The Detection Statistic Module................................................................................ 74
7.2.2 Stream Definition Module ....................................................................................... 86
7.2.3 Indicator Cleaning Module....................................................................................... 88
7.2.4 Alarm Reporting Module ......................................................................................... 90
7.3 Diagnostics ...................................................................................................................... 98
7.3.1 View FDEL Properties ............................................................................................... 99
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7.3.2 Download Diagnostic Logs ....................................................................................... 99
7.4 System, User and Database Management .................................................................... 100
7.4.1 Save properties snapshot....................................................................................... 100
7.4.2 Manage snapshots ................................................................................................. 100
7.4.3 Reset to Factory Defaults....................................................................................... 103
7.4.4 Manage users......................................................................................................... 103
7.4.5 Restart Helios ......................................................................................................... 104
1 Introduction to Helios Web Interface (HWI)

HWI is a web-‐based application designed to allow interaction with a Helios distributed acoustic
sensor. The viewing computer can be directly connected to the Helios system, or can be
connected via a LAN or a WAN. This allows for both local and remote Helios monitoring and
control. The Helios controller takes the raw backscattered light from the fibre sensor due to an
acoustic disturbance and transforms it into detailed knowledge about the time, location and
type of disturbance. HWI displays the controller’s response to a variety of alarm disturbance
types, and can display alarms when a particular disturbance has been detected that meets a
number of alarm criteria. The sophisticated disturbance alarm module has been designed to
ignore nuisance alarms while continuing to accurately alarm on disturbance types of interest.
HWI can produce a number of display outputs designed to allow users to fine tune and optimize
the system’s response. A full suite of diagnostic capabilities has been incorporated into HWI to
ensure that users are immediately notified of any irregularities in the system’s operation.
System log and parameter files can be easily downloaded to the user’s local computer in order
to more fully understand the system’s operational characteristics.
Not only can HWI display the Live Fibre response of the system, but it can also instruct the
Helios controller to log (record to disk) the raw system response and then have it played back
using the HWI Playback module. This feature allows for very accurate fine-‐tuning of system
parameters and settings providing improved alarm detection capabilities. HWI 4.2 supports
simultaneous detection and alarming on multiple alarm types. The following document will
discuss in detail the operation of the Helios controller through the HWI interface.
2 Logging into Helios Web Interface (HWI)

To access the Helios Web Interface (HWI), simply type the IP address of the desired Helios
controller into the address bar of a suitable browser.
Note: Supported web browsers include Safari on Mac and Chrome on Linux and PC with Java
applets and Javascript enabled. Firefox and Internet Explorer are not fully supported at this time.
Each Helios controller has a built in web server that is used to serve HWI to connected browsers.
The web server works with the standard http port 80, so only the unit’s IP address is required to
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access the main HWI display page, assuming the client computer is on the same network as the
Helios controller in question.
When successfully connected the user will be presented with simplified view of HWI referred to
as View Only mode, which provides limited functionality. Figure 1 shows the View Only display
screen.

Figure 1
To login, click on the Main Menu and select the Access secure pages… item. A standard login
dialog appears prompting for the user to login, as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2
See Section 7.4.4 for more details regarding user roles and the log in process.
The main display is described in more detail in the next section.
3 Main Display Overview

Figure 3 shows the main HWI display in Live Fibre mode when logged in as an Admin user. It
consists of six main areas (as indicated by the colored rectangles). These are: the window title
bar, menu bar, data graph and waterfall display, system control and status dashboard, data
logging dashboard and system health pane.
3.1 Window Title

The window title bar provides an indication as to the current operating mode of HWI. This is
either Live Fibre mode or Playback mode. The two modes look very similar and so this provides
users an additional way of determining current operating mode at a glance.
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Note: Another way to determine the current operating mode of HWI is to take note of the panel
on the bottom right of the screen. It will be titled “Playback Controls” when in playback mode
and “Helios Controls” when in live fibre mode. Lastly, if visible, the browser’s address bar will
contain “mode=playback” when in playback mode.

Figure 3
3.2 Menu Bar

The HWI menus contain all of the commands and dialogs accessible to an Admin user. There are
two menus, the Main menu (accessed by clicking on the Fotech logo) and the Admin menu. The
Main menu contains general system commands and dialogs, whereas the Admin menu contains
the processing and property specific commands and dialogs. Figure 4 shows the Main menu,
and Figure 5 shows the Admin menu.

Figure 4
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Figure 5
3.3 Data Graph and Waterfall Display Area

This is where the system response is displayed. The data graph displays the system response
amplitude as a function of fibre position at the current time using a bar graph display. The data
waterfall displays the system response amplitude as a function of fibre position at previous
times, using a single row to represent each update time. Colour is used to display the amplitude
information. To obtain amplitude, time and position information of a point in the data graph or
data waterfall, simply move the mouse pointer over the desired position. The amplitude, time
and position information is displayed in the Currently Viewing status section of the main
window. The data type currently being displayed can be selected from the Display drop down
menu.
3.4 System Control and Status Dashboard

This section controls system operation, selects the system mode (Live fibre or Playback mode),
monitors system status and displays any system warning and/or error messages. In Live fibre
mode, the user can turn the laser on and off, as well as start and stop the Helios system. In
Playback mode, this section allows for selection of the raw data file to be played back, as well as
all transport controls for the Playback module. For further details on the playback controls see
Section 4.11
3.5 System Health Pane

The System Health Pane shows a real-‐time view of key operational metrics of the Helios system.
It contains metrics for four modules: Processing module, Alarm module, Logging Module and
Reporting Module. For each module, it shows the compute load associated with each module,
along with other module specific information. Figure 6 shows the system health window. The
main thing to take note of is the Processing Module Load. This needs to be kept below 80% to
ensure stable system operation. Please refer to section 5.4 for a more in-‐depth discussion of
the System Health pane.

Figure 6
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3.6 Data Logging Dashboard
This section controls and monitors all aspects of global data logging. This is where data logging
properties are set and disk drives are mounted and/or un-‐mounted as required. In addition, the
current data logging status is displayed as well as the available disk drive space on the currently
mounted data logging drive. Please refer to section 5.3 for a more in-‐depth discussion of data
logging dashboard.
4 Getting Started
This section of the HWI users manual is designed to allow users to get their Helios systems up
and running quickly. It covers the main topics in enough detail to get the system operational
and to display a Sound Field. A more advanced discussion of system operational parameters is
given further down in this manual.
4.1 Connecting the Fibre Sensor

Before a Helios system can be operated, it must have a fibre sensor attached. If no fibre sensor
is connected to the Helios controller when the laser is turned on, the rear panel connector can
be damaged. The rear panel fibre sensor connector uses a standard E2000-‐APC optical
connector. Please ensure that the connector has been cleaned prior to inserting into the back
panel.
4.2 Unlocking the Helios System

Prior to removing the fibre sensor from the Helios system, it is strongly advised that the laser be
locked out. This is done by turning the key on the front panel of the Helios system to the Locked
position.
The front panel will confirm that the laser is locked out by illuminating the Laser Locked Out light
as shown below.
Once the fibre sensor has been securely inserted into the back panel, the laser lockout can be
turned to the Unlocked position. This will ensure that the Helios system laser is never
accidentally turned on when no fibre sensor is connected to the back panel.
4.3 Setting up the Optics Properties

The majority of the optics properties have been pre-‐set at the factory by Fotech engineers. Each
unit goes through significant testing and tuning to ensure the optics properties are set to
optimal values. These property values are copied into the factory defaults, so that if there is
ever a problem, they can be quickly recovered. See section 7.4.3 for more details on resetting
to factory defaults.
There are two dialogs that contain Optics properties; the first is the Optics Module tab in the
Hardware Properties dialog, and the second is the Optics tab in the Optical Channel Properties
dialog. To display these dialogs, click on the Admin menu and select Hardware properties and
Optical channel properties respectively. As can be seen from Figure 7 none of the Optics
properties in the Hardware Properties dialog are editable by a Normal User.
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Figure 7
Only a Factory User has the required permissions to edit these Optics properties. The Optics tab
in the Optical Channel Properties dialog contains the editable properties as shown in Figure 8.
The two properties that should be set for a typical deployment are the Pulse Repetition
Frequency (PRF), and the Pulse width (PW), as these two properties are dependent on the length
of the fibre sensor. These properties are preset at the factory to 5 KHz and 100 ns respectively.

Figure 8
4.3.1 Setting the PRF

Depending on the frequency bandwidth requirements and the length of the fibre sensor, the
PRF may have to be adjusted. The PRF is limited by the time it takes a pulse to travel to the end
of the fibre sensor and then reflect back to the Helios controller. A general rule of thumb is that
the PRF in KHz multiplied by the fibre sensor length in km must be less than 100.
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Note: This assumption is based on a Refractive Index (RI) of 1.5. If the RI decreases, the light in
the fibre speeds up allowing this product to be slightly larger.
If the PRF is set too high for a given Physical fibre length, the system will warn the user to reduce
the PRF to an acceptable value. The goal is to pulse the fibre sensor as quickly as possible, while
not overloading the system’s compute module.
A term quite often used with HWI is Monitoring Duty Cycle. Duty Cycle is a measure of the data
throughput of the system. A 100% Duty Cycle implies that the system is pulsing the fibre sensor
as quickly as possible with no time delay between the return of one pulse and the launching of
the next pulse. Increasing the PRF increases the Duty Cycle, which in turn increases the
maximum frequency that the system can detect. It also increases the load on the compute
module. The goal in setting the optimal PRF is to find the right balance between maximizing the
available system bandwidth and keeping the system compute load at a sustainable level. If a
100% Duty Cycle is needed to meet bandwidth requirements, and this increases the compute
load beyond maximum allowable levels, there are other compromises that can be made. These
will be discussed later when look at HWI’s processing properties.
4.3.2 Setting up the Pulse Width (PW)

The PW controls the system’s spatial accuracy and spatial resolution as well as the system’s
sensitivity to disturbances. Spatial accuracy is defined as how accurately the system can
pinpoint the exact location of a single disturbance. The spatial resolution is defined as the
minimum distance that two distinct disturbances can be separated while still being able to
detect both disturbances. The spatial resolution of the system is approximately equal to the
PW. If two distinct disturbances are separated by at least a PW, then they will be resolvable. As
this separation decreases, the two distinct disturbances will get smeared into a single composite
disturbance, and only one alarm will be generated. Spatial accuracy is not defined so precisely.
Even though wider PWs tend to smear out the spatial response, the response to a disturbance is
still reasonably accurate even as the PW increases to 100 ns and above.
Note: The PW is defined in terms of time. This is the time that the laser pulse is active. Given a
RI of 1.5, a 10 ns PW equates to a physical length of 1 m. As the RI decreases, the light in the
fibre sensor speeds up resulting in a slightly longer PW.
The goal in setting an optimal PW is to balance the requirement for system sensitivity
(particularly for longer fibre sensors) against the requirement for good spatial
resolution/accuracy. One way to look at this is a follows: If you reduce the PW to the point that
the system does not respond to a disturbance, having improved spatial resolution/accuracy is a
moot point. Always set the PW to a value that yields acceptable sensitivity to the desired
disturbances, and simply accept the resulting spatial resolution/accuracy.
For shorter fibre sensors, typically less than 10 km, a PW of 50 ns is sufficient for most
deployments. As fibre sensors increase in length up to 30-‐40 km, the PW typically needs to be
increased to between 100-‐200 ns. These are general guidelines, and are very dependent on the
fibre sensor deployment. Experimentation is required to optimize the PW.
The remainder of the optics properties are not typically adjusted unless there is a problem with
the system’s response.
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4.4 Setting up the Basic Fibre Properties
As mentioned above, the PRF and the Physical fibre length are dependent on each other. The
Physical fibre length should be set to the length of the fibre sensor that will be monitored with
HWI. It can be set slightly longer than the actual fibre sensor length, but it should never be set
to less than the actual fibre sensor length. This property also restricts the Monitor end property.
Figure 9 shows the Data Capture tab, which contains the basic fibre properties.

Figure 9
This dialog contains the basic properties to allow the system to start and display raw fibre shots
or a Default sound field. The key properties that require adjusting are: Physical fibre length,
Monitor start and Monitor end. The other properties may require adjustment as well, but are
not required to start the system and display data.
4.4.1 Physical Fibre Length

This value should be set to the actual length of the fibre sensor. It is used to limit both PRF and
Monitor end. It can be set to a value greater than the actual length of the fibre sensor in order
to see the response drop off at the end of the fibre, but should never be set less than the actual
length of the fibre sensor. If the PRF is set too high for the specified Physical fibre length, HWI
will warn the user when they attempt to submit properties to the Helios controller, and the user
will be required to reduce the PRF
4.4.2 Monitor Start

This value defaults to 0, and is used to set the starting distance of the monitor interval. There
are many situations where it is not desirable to start monitoring at the back panel of the Helios
controller. A good example would be monitoring an oil well. There is no need to monitor the
fibre between the Helios controller and the head of the well, so this would simply be ignored by
setting the Monitor start to be the actual distance from the back of the Helios controller to the
head of the well.
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4.4.3 Monitor End
The Monitor end defines the end of the monitored section of the fibre sensor. There are many
situations where it is not required to monitor all the way to the physical end of the fibre sensor.
This typically occurs when the compute load required to monitor the entire length of the fibre
sensor is too high, and therefore the fibre sensor is monitored in sections. It is the difference
between the Monitor end and Monitor start that defines the number of data samples that are to
be processed, thus having a significant impact on the system’s compute load.
Note: If the combination of monitored fibre distance and PRF results in an excessive compute
load, the system will display the error message shown in Figure 10 and stop monitoring the fibre
sensor. In addition to the suggestions given, the PRF may need to be reduced.

Figure 10
Once these properties have been set, the system is now ready to begin monitoring the fibre
sensor.
4.5 Displaying the Raw Fibre Response

Before starting up the system, the Display type should be changed to Raw Fibre Shot. Select
Raw Fibre Shot from the Display menu as shown in Figure 11 below. This will instruct the
system to display the raw signal coming off the optics module when the system starts up.

Figure 11
To start the system monitoring the fibre sensor, click on the Start Helios icon as shown in Figure
12 When the system is running, the Helios Controls section should look like Figure 13.
13

Figure 12

Figure 13
The system should be running now, and be displaying the raw data being digitized from the
optics module. The default scale for the Raw Fibre Shot display type is 32767. This is the
maximum value for raw data. Even though the Input voltage was set at the factory, there may
be data values in a zone of interest that are being clipped (they continuously display at the
maximum value), therefore it may be advisable to increase the Input voltage range to prevent
those fibre locations from being clipped. To change the Input voltage range, click on the
associated drop down menu (refer to Figure 9) and select the next higher value. To apply this
property change, click on the Apply button. This will momentarily stop the system and restart it
with the new Input voltage range. Figure 14 shows a raw fibre shot that is being clipped due to
an Input voltage being set to low (200 mV in this case). Figure 15 shows a properly scaled fibre
shot, and Figure 16 shows a fibre shot with the Input voltage set too high.
In addition, it is also suggested that the fibre sensor end position be displayed. Ensure that the
distance corresponding to the end of the fibre sensor is in agreement with the known fibre
sensor distance. Distance discrepancies are typically due to errors in the RI setting being used.
Note: It is important not to clip the raw data, as this will introduce non-‐linear distortion into the
processing system that will significantly reduce the sensitivity of the portion of the fibre sensor
being clipped.

Figure 14 (Input Voltage: 200 mV)

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4.6 Displaying the Default Sound Field

Once the Input voltage range has been adjusted to maximize the gain of the raw data without
clipping any data in a zone of interest, the system is ready to display the Default sound field
display. This display type has been designed to respond to any fibre disturbance occurring on
the fibre sensor. To view the Default sound field display type, click the dropdown menu to the
right of Display, and select Default. HWI will switch to the Default display.
Note: Sometimes the there is a slight delay when attempting to change sound field display
types. This happens when the data cannot be drawn as quickly as the data is being sent to HWI.
When this happens, a spinning wheel is displayed until the HWI display catches up with the
incoming data.
4.7 Manipulating Display Scales in the Sound Field Display

Depending on the intensity of the disturbance and the display type currently being viewed,
there is often the need to alter the display scale to observe specific signal character. Each
display type has a default scale value that is used when it is viewed for the first time. Once a
display type has been viewed, the system remembers the last scale value associated with a
display type. To change the scale value for a specific display type, enter a new value into the
scale text box in the upper left hand corner of the sound field display as shown in Figure 17
shows the location of the scale text box. Press Enter to register the change. The scale value can
also be edited in the Colour Map dialog as described below in section 4.9.
Note: There currently is no ability to adjust the minimum display scale value..

Figure 17
4.8 Zooming and Panning

HWI allows for zooming into the Sound Field in distance, in time and in both distance and time.
Once zoomed, you can pan around in the display. HWI supports multiple zoom levels. Once
zoomed, it is easy to back out of each zoom level until you reach the original un-‐zoomed display.
To zoom into the Sound Field and display a subset of the original data, click on the icon
located in the upper left portion of the Sound Field data graph to enter the zoom mode.
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To zoom in distance only, click the starting distance position ensuring the mouse pointer is in
the data graph section of the display (above the waterfall section) or the distance ruler (at the
bottom of the waterfall section). Then with the mouse button depressed, drag the mouse to the
desired ending position and release the mouse button. There will be a coloured vertical bar
showing the the zoomed distances as the second distance is being selected. After the mouse
button is released, the display will update showing only the data between the selected start and
end distance.
To zoom in time only, click the starting time ensuring the mouse pointer is in the time
annotation section of the display (to the left of the waterfall section). Then with the mouse
button depressed, drag the mouse to the desired ending time and release the mouse button.
There will be a coloured horizontal bar showing the the zoomed time interval as the second
distance is being selected. After the mouse button is released, the display will update showing
only the data between the selected start and end time. The display will continue to scroll in
time as new data is displayed in the Sound Field
To zoom in both distance and time, click the starting distance-‐time point ensuring the mouse
pointer is in the waterfall portion of the Sound Field display. With the mouse button depressed,
drag the mouse pointer to the desired end distance-‐time point and release the mouse button.
There will be a coloured rectangle showing the zoom area as second point is being selected.
Note: When you are selecting a region to zoom to, as your mouse nears the edges of the graph
or soundfield display it will snap to the edge for your convenience.
Once the Sound Field display has been zoomed, the controls change, as shown below in Figure
18. There are two new icons added to the display.

Figure 18
To unzoom to the previous zoom level, click the (unzoom, which is the middle icon from top
to bottom) icon. To pan around in Sound Field display, click the icon. Once selected, the
icon highlights in yellow, indicating that the Sound Field display is in Pan mode. To perform a
distance pan, drag the mouse pointer in the desired direction, either left or right. To pan the
display in order to bring further distances into view, the display needs to be panned to the left.
This is done by dragging the mouse pointer from right to left in the Data Graph area.
Note: To restrict to distance-‐only panning, ensure the pan operation is performed in the Data
Graph area to prevent accidental time panning.
Time panning is very similar to distance, except that the mouse pointer is dragged up or down in
the time annotation section of the Sound Field. The display can only be panned over data that
has already been displayed. When a time pan has occurred, a yellow text field is displayed in the
upper left corner of the waterfall display indicating the time difference between the upper most
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row and the current time. The negative value implies that the time of the top row is before the
current time.
Time and distance panning is very similar to both distance and time panning, except that the
mouse cursor can be dragged in any direction inside the waterfall area of the Sound Field
display. The horizontal component pans in distance whereas the vertical component pans in
time. When the panned Sound Field display reaches either the start or end distance, horizontal
panning stops. When the panned Sound Field display reaches the current time, the vertical
panning stops.
Once the Sound Field display has been panned to the desired location, click the icon to exit
out of Pan mode.
Note: The unzoom icon can be clicked while still in Pan mode to back out to the previous zoom.
This operation cancels out of the current Pan operation.
4.9 Manipulating the Colour Map

In addition to simply changing the Display Scale, the colour map can be manipulated in order to
optimize the HWI Sound Field display. To bring up the Colour Map editing module, click on the
Main menu, then click on Colour map… This brings up the Colour Map editing dialog, as shown
in Figure 19.

Figure 19
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4.9.1.1 Adding new Colour Control points

To add a new colour control point, double click to the right of the colour map. This will add a
new colour control point at the current mouse position.
4.9.1.2 Adjusting Existing Colour Control points

Once the new colour control point has been added, it can be moved to a new location by
clicking the left mouse button on the white arrow (on the left edge of the colour control point)
and dragging the colour control point up or down the colour bar. When the mouse hovers over
the white arrow, it changes to indicate that the colour control point can be moved up or down.
In addition, the actual colour of the control point can be changed. To change the colour of a
control point, move the mouse to the coloured bar in the control point (the mouse pointer will
change to a pointing finger) and click the left mouse button. This brings up the colour selection
dialog as shown in Figure 20. Select the desired colour.

Figure 20
4.9.1.3 Removing Existing Colour Control points

To remove a colour control point from the current colour map, click the left mouse button on
the to the right of the control point.
4.9.1.4 Add a Colour Highlight

In addition to defining a static colour map, a dynamic colour highlight can be overlaid on the
current colour map. Colour highlights are very useful to dynamically change the colour map to
focus attention on a specific range of intensity levels. To create a dynamic colour highlight,
move the mouse pointer directly over the colour map to the desired starting location (the
mouse pointer will change into a pointing finger). Then click and drag the left mouse button to
the desired ending position. As soon as the left button is clicked, the highlight colour is
displayed over the colour map. It will grow and shrink in size as the mouse is dragged up and
down the colour map. To complete the selection of the colour highlight, release the left mouse
button.
Once a colour highlight has been added, it can be dragged anywhere in the colour map by
clicking and dragging the left mouse button to a new location. The colour highlight will track the
mouse as it is dragged.
Note: The colour highlight cannot be resized once it has been added to the colour bar.
To remove a colour highlight, click the left mouse button on the located in the upper left
corner of the colour highlight.
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4.9.1.5 Saving a new Colour Map
To save an edited colour map, click on in the lower right corner of the Colour Map dialog.
This will save the current colour map as the new default colour map, and can be retrieved from
the database if required.
4.9.1.6 Loading the Saved Colour Map

After editing a colour map, it may be desirable to get back to a colour map that you have
previously saved. To restore a colour map that was saved to the database, click on the
located in the lower right corner of the colour map dialog. This will replace the current colour
map with the one that was last saved in the database.
4.9.1.7 Restoring the Default Colour Map

The default colour map is defined when the software is installed on a Helios controller. It
cannot be changed. It can be restored by clicking on the in the lower right corner of the
Colour Map dialog. This default colour map can then be edited, saved and restored as described
in the above sections.
4.10 Logging Raw Data

There are many situations where it is advantageous to log raw data to a disk drive. The most
common reason to log raw data to disk is to replay it in the HWI Playback module. Data logging
requires that a disk drive is mounted and that both a logging directory and filename are defined.
Once these properties have been properly setup, data logging can commence.

Figure 21
To mount a data drive, click on the drive-‐mounting icon in the Data Logging dashboard. Figure
22 shows the Drive Mounting dialog. Any disk drives/partitions that are available to be mounted
will be listed in this dialog. Select the desired disk drive/partition, and click Submit.

Figure 22
A gear icon in the Data Logging dashboard (as shown above in Figure 21) has been provided as a
shortcut to the Data Logging tab of the Optical Channel Properties dialog. Figure 23 shows the
Data Logging tab of the Optical Channel Properties dialog. The Data Logging tab contains all the
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properties used by the Data Logging module. The Data Logging module is designed to allow the
user to log raw data over the entire monitored fibre section, over a user-‐defined subset of the
entire monitored fibre section, or over one or more pre-‐defined zones. The data format is an
optimized internal data format called FDS (Fotech Data Stream). These files are self-‐contained,
containing all the property information required to allow them to be used with the HWI
Playback module. By default, the raw data will be logged over the current monitored interval
(as denoted by Start and End).

Figure 23
There are two ways to commence global raw data logging. The first is to ensure the Raw Logging
checkbox has been selected in the Data Logging dialog, and then click Apply or Save. This will
stop the Helios controller (if currently running), and re-‐start it with data logging operational.
The data will be logged until the system is stopped. If a property change is made and submitted,
a new data logging file will be created when the system restarts.
Note: Each raw data file that is logged will have the creation time incorporated into its filename
to assist in the organization of Helios data files.
The second method to commence data logging is to use the Dynamic Data Logging dialog. Click
on the lightening bolt in the Data Logging dashboard to bring up the Dynamic Data Logging
dialog as shown in Figure 24. To select a subset of the monitored section, either textually enter
in a new start and end distance (which can only be done when not currently logging to allow for
proper distance validation), or click the Select logging area visually button to graphically select a
logging subset. If the latter is chosen, move the mouse pointer to the desired starting distance,
click and drag the mouse to the desired end distance and release. The start and end distances
will update showing the graphical selection.
20

Figure 24
Once the logging interval has been defined, click on the Off button. It will change to On, and the
data logging will commence.
Note: If data is being logged, and the start and end distance is changed, the current FDS file will
be closed, and a new FDS will be created with the new start and end distance.
4.11 Playback of Raw Data Using the HWI Playback Module
Once a raw data file has been logged, it is possible to replay the data file using the HWI Playback
module. To bring up the Playback module, click on the icon to the right of Helios Controls when
in Live Fibre mode as shown in Figure 25.

Figure 25
A warning message will be displayed asking for confirmation to enter the Playback module.
Click OK to continue to the Playback module.
The Playback module looks very similar to the Live Fibre module, with the only difference being
the Helios Controls section of the main window. Figure 26 shows the Playback module controls
when first displayed.

Figure 26
Click on the to select the raw data file to be used as input for the Playback module. Figure
27 shows the file selection dialog.
21

Figure 27
The Project Path string will always default to the current Logging directory. To change the
directory, type in a new data directory and click the Refresh File List button. If successful this
will populate the FDS File dropdown with all the FDS files found in the Project Path and all
subdirectories that pass the filename and minimum size filters, if any. To select the file, click on
the FDS File drop down menu, and select the desired file.
Note: Be wary of what project path you choose as refreshing the file list could take a fair amount
of time to search through the entire directory structure.
Once the desired FDS file has been selected, click the Select button. When the FDS file has been
selected, the controls section updates with information specific to the selected FDS file. Figure
28 shows how the playback controls update once an FDS file has been selected. The playback
controls update to display the name, the start and end distance and the start and end time of
the selected FDS file.

Figure 28
The Playback module has a number of transport functions that control how the input FDS file is
viewed in the playback module. The following describes this transport functionality in more
detail.
4.11.1 Define a new distance range to display

For FDS files covering large distance ranges, it is very desirable to be able to playback a smaller
distance subset of the original file. This distance subset may contain an event disturbance of
interest, or some other interesting characteristic that you would like to restrict playback to.
There are two methods available to define a distance subset, either textually or graphically. The
following paragraphs will describe these in more detail.
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4.11.1.1 Textually enter a new start and end distance
To textually define a distance subset, ensure the playback module is currently stopped and type
in the desired relative start and end distance into the Start and End text fields. The start and end
distances will be validated against the start and end distances specified by the file and cannot
exceed these values.
4.11.1.2 Graphically enter a new start and end distance

To graphically define a distance subset, ensure the playback module is currently stopped and
click on the icon. Move the mouse to the desired Start distance on the Sound Field display,
click and drag the mouse to the desired End distance, and release. The start and end distance
fields will be populated with the resulting values.
4.11.1.3 Expand to the full distance range of the input FDS file
To expand the current distance range, click on the Expand button , and the distance range
reverts back to the entire length specified by the input FDS file.
4.11.2 Define a new time range to display

For FDS files covering very large time ranges, it is very desirable to playback a smaller time
subset of the original file. This time subset may contain an event disturbance of interest, or
some other interesting characteristic that you would like to playback. There are two methods
available to define a time subset, either textually or graphically. The following paragraphs will
describe these in more detail.
4.11.2.1 Textually enter a new start and end time

To textually define a time subset, type in the desired relative start and end time into the Start
and End text fields. The Start time needs to be greater than or equal to zero, and the End time
needs to be less than or equal to the number of seconds in the file. Clicking off the text box,
pressing the Tab key, or pressing the Enter key will register the new times.
When changing the playback start and end times while actively playing a file one of two things
may happen. If the currently playing time is within the newly selected start and end, then the
playback will continue uninterrupted. If the currently playing time is not within the newly
selected start and end times playback will begin at the new start time.
4.11.2.2 Graphically enter a new start and end time

A more convenient way to define a time subset is to move the mouse to the desired Start time
on the progress bar, click and drag the mouse to the desired End time, and release. The
Progress Bar expands to the new Start and End times, and the playback continues between the
new Start and End times.
Note: When the mouse pointer is inside the progress bar, the current time of the mouse pointer
is displayed. This can be used to assist in selecting the desired start and end time of the time
subset.
4.11.2.3 Expand to the full time range of the input FDS file
To expand the current time range, click on the Expand button , and the time range reverts
back to the entire length of the input FDS file. The Progress bar now stretches from the
beginning to the end of the input FDS file.
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4.11.3 Play
Clicking the Play button commences playing at the current file position.
4.11.4 Play from beginning of range

Clicking on the Restart button will move the file position to the beginning of the current
display range, and start playing the input FDS file. It will play at the current Play Speed.
4.11.5 Pause
Clicking the Pause button will pause playback of the input FDS file. Playback can be restarted
at the current file position by clicking on the Play button, or restarted at the beginning of the
current display range by clicking on the Restart button, or stopped by clicking on the Stop
button.
4.11.6 Stop
Clicking the Stop button will stop the playback module. The system will stop, and the file
position will be reset to the beginning of the current display range.
4.11.7 Loop at end of file

Clicking on the Loop button will cause the playback module to automatically loop to the
beginning of the current display range when it reaches the end of the current display range.
This is very useful for continually replaying a specific portion of a larger FDS file.
4.11.8 Fast Forward and Speed Control

The default playback speed for the playback module is Real-‐Time (Playback of the input FDS file
will be at the same rate that it was acquired at.) This is what all speed factors are referenced to.
In many situations it is desirable to playback data faster than Real-‐Time. To increase the
playback speed, either textually enter a value in the Speed text box, or click the
Fast Forward button . Each time the Fast Forward button is clicked the playback speed
increases by a factor of 2. The playback speed goes from 1 -‐> 2 -‐> 4 -‐> 8 -‐> 16 -‐> 32 -‐> MAX -‐> 1
and so on. A double click of the Fast Forward button will jump directly to the MAX speed.
Note: MAX speed is defined as the maximum speed at which data can be read off of the disk and
processed. It is affected by the bandwidth constraints between the Helios controller and the web
browser that HWI is running on. For shorter fibre sensors, the Helios controller can read and
process the data faster than it can be sent to the HWI display. When this happens, the data
being sent to HWI queues up. Making a change to HWI when this data queuing has occurred
may take several seconds to be seen on the HWI display while the queued data is sent to HWI.
There can also be a significant delay observed when the Playback module is stopped. Therefore,
make sure that you are not attempting to send data at too high a rate to the HWI display.
Note: A textually entered speed change is registered one of three ways: Clicking off of the text
box, pressing the Tab key, or pressing the Enter key.
Note: A fractional speed multiplier of less than one can be entered into the Speed text box.
Using a fractional speed multiplier is required when displaying sound fields with high update
rates.
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4.11.9 Seeking to a new start time
The Progress Bar shows the current time range of the input FDS file, as well as the current file
position. When the mouse hovers over the Progress Bar, the time from the beginning of the
input FDS file is displayed. To immediately jump to a specific time, move the mouse to the
desired time and click on the Progress Bar. This sets the current file position to the selected
time. If the file is already playing, it jumps immediately to the selected time. If the file is paused
or stopped, it will start at the selected time the next time it is played. (Provided the Re-‐Start
button is not pressed before the file starts playing.)
Once the Playback module is playing a raw FDS data file, the operation of the Playback module
is identical to the Live Fibre mode. All properties are updated in exactly the same fashion,
including dynamic property updates. The Sound Field display types can be changed in exactly
the same fashion as they are changed in the Live Fibre mode. One thing to note is that the
properties used in the Playback module are those that were last used in Live Fibre mode, with
the exception of the Monitor Start and End, which are overridden by values in the FDS file
header. There currently is no facility to import all of the properties from the FDS file header into
HWI.
During playback (and in Live Fibre mode also) whenever there is a time discontinuity, a red line
is drawn across the Sound Field and a red time stamp is drawn in the time axis to denote a jump
in time. This time jump can be either forward or backward (in the case of looping back to an
earlier time).
4.12 Requirements for Displaying More Advanced Sound Field Types and
Creating Alarm Reports
If no Alarm Report has been selected, only a small subset of the Sound Field display types is
available. In order to display the other Sound Field display types, an Alarm Report needs to be
selected for display.
Note: If no Alarm Reports are available, one must be created. Most HWI 4 systems ship with a
set of pre-‐installed Alarm Reports. Please refer to section 7.2 for a more detailed discussion on
the process to create a new Alarm Report.
Before going into a detailed discussion about how to create an Alarm Report, it is worthwhile to
provide a general overview on how HWI 4 operates. This discussion will introduce the
operational methodology of HWI 4.
HWI 4 introduces a significant improvement in the ability to detect and alarm on multiple
disturbance types simultaneously. The overall alarming process is broken down into four main
sections:
1. Pre-‐process the raw data to maximize the Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) for a desired
disturbance class.
2. Threshold the preprocessed SNR data into a collection of Boolean (True or False) alarm
indicators.
3. Condition the alarm indicators using image-‐processing techniques to reduce false

positives and false negatives (referred to as cleaning).
25
4. Analyze the temporal-‐spatial relationships of the cleaned indicators in order to decide if
a valid alarm should be raised.
HWI 4 is cabable of dealing with multiple simultaneous disturbance types by executing multiple
instances of the above alarming process in parallel.
In addition, in step 4, the system is able to take multiple streams of indicators and use Boolean
logic to combine them thereby increasing the probability of removing nuisance alarms that we
do not want to alarm on. Each of these four sections makes up a component of an Alarm
Report. The following sections provide an overview of each of the components of an Alarm
Report.
4.12.1 The Preprocessing

This module takes the raw signal directly from the optics module, analyzes it and produces a
pseudo SNR output. This module uses signal frequency as well as its temporal and spatial
characteristics to produce this SNR output. By careful selection of the preprocessing
parameters, the system is able to produce an SNR output that has higher values for desired
disturbances and lower values for other disturbances. The preprocessing step is really only
designed to narrow disturbances down into broad classes. As an example, it can separate
impulsive disturbances (walking, digging etc.) from persistent disturbances (vehicle movements,
pipe leaks, aircraft noise). In addition, signals that contain significantly different frequency
responses can be separated, as well as signals that have significantly different spatial extents
(localized to a short section of the fibre sensor vs. non-‐localized).
The output of the preprocessing section is a two dimensional array of data, with distance (bin
location) on one axis, and time on the other axis. This output array is made up of Detection
Statistics. Due to the nature of our preprocessing algorithm, the time dimension of this array
has been heavily decimated. Whereas we might have 5000 to 10000 fibre shots being acquired
every second, we typically only compute between 9 and 39 Detection Statistics per second. We
only compute a single row of Detection Statistics for each FFT block that we process. The exact
rate at which we output detection statistics is the PRF divided by the FFT Size. Refer to section
7.2.1 for a more in-‐depth discussion of how to optimize a Detection Statistic.
4.12.2 Alarm Thresholding

Once a Detection Statistic array has been computed, it is fed into a thresholding module that
passes all time-‐space points that have values within a user-‐specified amplitude range and rejects
all time-‐space points that have values outside a user-‐specified amplitude range. Each time-‐
space point that passes is converted into a Boolean True value, and all others are converted into
a Boolean False value. These Boolean values are referred to as raw alarm indicators, implying
that they may be an indication of a pending alarm. The indicators on their own can be quite
noisy depending on the level of separation between desired and undesired disturbance types.
The next section is responsible for cleaning up the raw indicators. Refer to section 7.2.2 for a
more in-‐depth discussion of how to create an Alarm Stream.
4.12.3 Alarm Indicator Cleaning

Depending on the SNR between desirable disturbances (ones we want to alarm on) and other
disturbances (nuisance alarms), raw alarm indicators can be quite noisy, and basing alarming
decisions on these raw alarm indicators can produce less than optimal results. This module has
been designed to analyze the array of raw indicators that could be associated with a desirable
26
disturbance type, and attempt to remove both false positives and false negatives. A false
positive is when an indicator exists that shouldn’t because it is not associated with a desirable
disturbance. A false negative is when an indicator is missing that should exist because it is
associated with a desirable disturbance.
As an example, let’s look at a typical footstep in a walking disturbance. It will have a

characteristic time duration and spatial extent. In an ideal situation, there would be an
elliptically shaped collection of alarm indicators that has a relatively smooth perimeter, and
does not have any gaps or holes inside its perimeter. In reality, there will be indicators that
occur outside the perimeter of the disturbance ellipse (false positives), as well as many holes on
and inside the perimeter (false negatives). There may be enough false positives and negatives
that the alarming logic will miss the footstep, and therefore not classify walking accurately. If
the indicator-‐cleaning section does its job well, it will clean up the footfall into a nice solid
ellipse. Refer to section 7.2.3 for an in-‐depth discussion on how to effectively clean raw Alarm
indicators.
4.12.4 Alarm Generation Logic

The localized components (for example a footfall or a shovel dig) that make up different
disturbance types can be very similar, therefore requiring additional logic to correctly alarm on
desirable disturbance types. This module looks at collections of components and based on the
time-‐space relationships between the components, it determines if the response is from a
desired disturbance, and if so generates the appropriate Alarm Report. It is this additional logic
that performs most of the actual disturbance classification and nuisance rejection work.
With this basic overview of how HWI 4 produces Alarm Reports, it now becomes clear that for
the system to generate an Alarm Report, one must be selected, and for one to be selected, one
or more Alarm Reports (with the associated streams, detection statistic templates and alarm
cleaning templates) must exist.
Most Helios systems running HWI 4 will be shipped with a set of non-‐editable factory templates
that can be used as a generalized starting point for alarm generation. Refer to section 7.2.4 for
a more in-‐depth discussion on how to define Alarm Reports.
5 Advanced Display Features

5.1 Sound Field Display Types
HWI allows for the display of a number of different data display types, each conveying unique
information relating to the system’s response to various disturbances. As mentioned in Sections
4.5 & 4.6, the most common display types are the Raw Fibre Shot and the Default display types.
These data display types (as well as Mean Fibre Shot and Mean Fibre Shot Drift) do not require
an active Alarm Report be setup. The remaining six display types DO require an active Alarm
Report in order to be displayed in the Sound Field. To select a specific display type, click the
Display dropdown list, and select the desired display type. The Sound Field will update to
display the newly selected display type. This is a dynamic operation that does not require the
HWI system to stop and restart. The data values already existing in the Sound Field remain, but
the Sound Field scale value will update to the last value used for a selected display type. The
following sections describe in more detail each of the display types that are available in HWI.
Figure 29 shows the Display Type Dropdown list.
27
5.1.1 Alarm Report Independent Display Types
These 4 display types do not require an active Alarm Report in order to display them in the
Sound Field. Figure 29 shows the Display Type dropdown list when there are no active Alarm
Reports.
Note: An Alarm Report is made active by selecting it in the Alarm Report tab of the Optical
Channel Properties dialog
Click on the desired display type to display it in the Sound Field.

Figure 29
5.1.1.1 Default
The Default display type has been designed to respond to any valid signal disturbance occurring
between DC Cutoff and Nyquist (the full frequency range as defined by the PRF). It does not
require an active Detection Statistic from an active Alarm Report. The advantage of the Default
display type is that it shows the instantaneous broadband signal-‐to-‐noise level in the raw data,
which relates to the gross amplitude of all physical disturbances to the fibre, regardless of any
spectral characteristics. In other words, the Default display type shows the fibre sensor’s
response to disturbances as a function of distance without requiring active Alarm Reports.
5.1.1.2 Raw Fibre Shot

This data display type shows the raw digitized data coming in directly from the optics module as
a function of distance. The raw data contains values between 0 and 32,7687. In addition, all of
the previous data display types are derived from the power spectra of the input signal, and all
have an update rate equal to the FFT update rate. The raw data comes in at the PRF, which is at
a much higher update rate. When the raw fibre shot is displayed, the system simply takes the
first fibre shot of every FFT block, and sends that raw fibre shot to the HWI display. There is no
temporal averaging occurring in the data reduction.
5.1.1.3 Mean Fibre Shot

The Mean Fibre Shot display shows the mean value (or DC component) of the fibre response at
each fibre location over the FFT interval. It is very similar to the Raw Signal display, but updates
much slower (at the FFT update rate rather than the PRF). This display type shows variations of
the non-‐time varying fibre response (over the duration of an FFT block) as a function of distance.
This response closely reflects the ambient response of the fibre sensor at each sample point.
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5.1.1.4 Mean Fibre Shot Drift
The Mean Fibre Shot Drift displays the amplitude variation of the Mean Fibre Shot (commonly
referred to as DC Baseline) between FFT blocks as a function of distance. Ideally, there should
be very little drift over time, as the DC Baseline is the fibre response in the absence of any
physical excitation. In practice, the DC Baseline does drift a fair amount from FFT block to FFT
block. The Mean Fibre Shot Drift provides an indication as to the magnitude of this temporal
drift.
5.1.2 Alarm Report Dependent Display Types

These display types can only be displayed when at least one Alarm Report has been selected
Figure 30 shows the Display Type menu when a single stream is active. If more than one stream
is active, the Display Type menu changes to include sub-‐menus that will contain a list of all
active streams as shown in Figure 31.

Figure 30

Figure 31
5.1.2.1 Signal RMS

This display type shows the time series RMS (Root Mean Square of the time samples) over an
FFT block due to signal power only, band limited to the analysis band. Refer to section 7.2.1.1.1
for a description of the analysis band.
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5.1.2.2 Noise RMS
This display type value is very similar to the Signal RMS value except that it is the time series
RMS over an FFT block due to noise power only, band limited to the analysis band.
5.1.2.3 Total RMS

This display type shows the time series RMS over an FFT block including signal and noise power,
band limited to the analysis band.
5.1.2.4 Stream Detection Value

This display type shows the detection statistic for a particular stream. This value is a pseudo
SNR (Signal to Noise ratio) of the response of the fibre, band limited to the analysis band. This
value is computed in two stages. First, the raw detection statistic is computed using the spectral
processing properties assigned to a particular stream. Then the raw detection statistic is
optionally de-‐smeared using the Detection Statistic Half-‐life assigned to a particular stream. The
Stream Detection Value is used as input for the Alarm Thresholding module, which generates
the Stream Indicators.
5.1.2.5 Stream Indicators

The Stream Indicators display type is a very commonly used display type. As mentioned above,
raw indicators exist when the Alarm Detection Value falls within a user-‐defined amplitude
range. All time space points with Alarm Detection Values above the Alarm detection threshold
and optionally below the Alarm suppression threshold will produce a raw indicator. These raw
indicators are then optionally cleaned to remove false positive and false negative values. These
cleaned indicators are shown using this data display type. This data display type is used to
optimize the Alarm detection threshold as well as the Indicator cleaning properties in order to
produce a solid stream of cleaned indicators appearing where interesting disturbances are
located.
Stream Indicators are the input into the Alarm Reporting module, and without properly
conditioned indicators, the probability of robustly alarming on desired disturbances is greatly
diminished.
5.1.2.6 Alarm Indicators

As mentioned above, an Alarm Report can consist of multiple streams. Each stream will have a
set of Stream Indicators associated with it. The Alarm Indicators display type shows the Boolean
combination of the cleaned indicators being used as input into the Alarm Reporting module.
This display type is very helpful in fine-‐tuning the Boolean logic used in combining individual
streams being fed into the Alarm Reporting logic.
5.2 Tracking Velocities on the Waterfall Display

It is sometimes desirable to determine the velocity of a moving event disturbance on the Sound
Field display. Velocity tracking is the default mode of the Sound Field display. To determine
(track) a velocity, ensure that the Sound Field display is not currently in zoom or pan mode and
click the mouse at one end of the interesting event disturbance, drag it along the event and
release. A line will be displayed in the current highlight colour, and the velocity will be displayed
by the line. Repeat this procedure as many times as desired. To remove all velocity tracks
display on the Sound Field, click the highlighted located directly under the Play/Pause icon.
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Note: The Clear Velocities icon will only appear if you have drawn velocity tracking lines on the
sound field display
Note: Velocities cannot cross time discontinuities in the Sound Field (denoted by a red line)..
5.3 Data Logging Dashboard

The Data Logging Dashboard displays all the relevant information related to data logging. It
displays the current logging status, facilitates the mounting and un-‐mounting of disk drives,
setting the data logging properties and initiation of dynamic data logging. Figure 32 shows the
Data Logging Dashboard. The following sections will describe each of these in more detail.

Figure 32
5.3.1 Mounting an External Data Drive

To mount an external disk drive used to log data to, ensure that the external drive is connected
to the Helios controller via an ESATA or USB connector. Click on the green drive-‐mounting icon
to the right of Device. This will open up the Drive Mounting dialog box shown in Figure 33. This
lists all available disk drives attached to the Helios controller. Select the required drive and
submit to Helios. The device will now be mounted and listed under Device. All data logged by
the system will be logged to this device.

Figure 33
Note: Before mounting a different disk drive, make sure that any currently mounted disk drive
is un-‐mounted first. The HWI system may not operate properly if two disk drives are
inadvertently mounted at the same time.
Note: The drive-‐mounting icon is grayed out when the system is running. In order to mount or
un-‐mount a disk drive, ensure that the Helios controller has been stopped. This was
implemented as a safety feature to ensure that a disk drive was not inadvertently un-‐mounted
when data was being written to it.
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5.3.2 Setting up Data Logging Properties
To set up data logging properties click on the small gear icon to the right of the Data Logging
Status. This allows you to select the desired type of logging and specify the logging directories
and file name. All data is logged by default to the directory /HeliosData as this is where the data
logging disk is mounted. See section 4.2.5 for a more detailed explanation of the Data Logging
Properties.
5.3.3 Dynamic Global Data Logging

If the Helios controller is running and an event of interest occurs, data logging can be initialized
immediately (so long as the data logging directory and filename have been defined) by clicking
the Dynamic Data Logging icon (the lightning bolt icon to the right of the gear icon). This will
bring up the Dynamic Data Logging dialog as shown in Figure 34.

Figure 34
By default, the system will log the entire monitored section of the fibre. The logging interval can
be overridden by either entering in a start and end distance for the data logging, or by clicking
on the Select logging area visually button. When this button is selected, the mouse cursor
changes to a crosshair allowing the user to graphically select the data logging interval. To
graphically select the data logging interval, move the mouse to the start of the desired logging
interval, click and drag the mouse to the desired ending distance and release. The data logging
interval is now highlighted in the highlight colour. The start and end text fields will update with
the graphically selected start and end distances. To commence data logging, click the Off
button. The data logging on/off button will change to On.
The Sound Field display will update to show the current logging interval with a thin black line
below the data graph. Data logging will commence and the data logging status will update to
Logging. To terminate the dynamic data logging operation, click the On button to turn it Off. As
well, the Logging Status will change to Not Logging indicating that the logging operation has
been terminated.
Note: If there were any zones being logged when the dynamic logging commenced, the zone
logging will be terminated, as the system will not allow global logging and zone logging to
operate concurrently. Zone logging will not be turned back on once global logging has stopped.
5.4 System Health Pane

As discussed in Section 3.5, the System Health Pane shows a real-‐time view of key operational
metrics of the Helios system. It contains metrics for four modules: Processing module, Alarm
module, Logging Module and Reporting Module. For each module, it shows the compute load
associated with each module, along with other module specific information. Figure 35 shows the
system health window. The following sections will describe each module in more detail.
32

Figure 35
5.4.1 Processing Module

This is the left most column of the System Health dashboard. It displays the compute load for
the Processing Module. If the load of the processing module exceeds 80%, a warning icon is
displayed. It is a good idea at this point to reduce the compute load of the Processing Module
(see note below). If the compute load of the Processing Module sits at 100% for an extended
period of time (10-‐15 seconds) then there is a high probability that the system will fail, because
the processing module can’t process the data as fast as the Acquisition Module is acquiring data.
Note: The processing module compute load can be reduced by reducing the PRF (4.3.1),
increasing the FFT size (7.1.2.2.3.1), enabling Frame Stacking (7.1.2.2.3.3), or enabling Spatial
Decimation (7.2.1.2.3). See the appropriate section for more details.
In addition to the compute load of the Processing Module, the System Health displays the
Available Data Buffer and the Buffer Backlog; both in seconds. The Available Buffer tells us how
long of a backlog we can sustain before the system fails. The Buffer Backlog tells us how far the
Processing Module is currently backed up. Typically, when the compute load of the Processing
Module reaches 100%, the Buffer Backlog will begin to grow, as it takes longer to process and
relinquish the buffers. To minimize the probability of having a Buffer Backlog cause a system
failure, the compute load of the Processing Module should be kept below 100%.
5.4.2 Alarm Module

When an alarm is generated from a stationary event disturbance, it can optionally contain a
filtered time history (the filtered time series at the disturbance location) that is associated with
the alarm. The extraction and filtering of these time histories can consume a significant number
of CPU cycles depending on the number of alarms being generated, as well as the length of time
for each alarm. The compute load of the Alarm Module measures the CPU load associated with
this extraction and filtering operation. This value will climb when the system can no longer keep
up with the incoming requests. The Backlog indicates how many alarms are currently awaiting
this extraction and filtering operation.
Note: This time history can currently only be viewed through the higher level Panoptes
application.
5.4.3 Data Logging Module

This is the third column of the System Health dashboard. This module is responsible for logging
(writing to disk) the raw data over user-‐selected sections of the fibre sensor, and optionally the
Sound Field data over the entire monitored section. It displays the compute load associated
with the Logging Module, along with the Data Write Speed and the Logging Backlog. The
compute load for the Logging Module is based on the percentage of time the system spends
physically writing data to the disk. If the Logging Module spends 50% of its time waiting for data
to be written, the compute load will be 50%. This metric is very closely related to the Data
Write Speed.
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The current Data Write Speed is shown in MB/Sec (Megabytes per second). It is important to
note that most eSata disk drives have lower maximum write speeds as the disk fills up. It is not
uncommon for the max data write speed at the end of a disk drive to be 30%-‐40% lower than
the max data write speed at the beginning of the disk. This has to do with the physical
construction of the disk platters. For a typical 7200 RPM 2 TB eSata disk drive, sustained write
speeds (sustainable over the full volume of the disk drive) typically max out at around 90
MB/Sec. If the required data logging write speed increases too high, there is a very likely
possibility that the HWI system will stop, as a result of trying to write data faster than the disk
drive can accept. As the required write speed approaches the rate at which the disk drive can
accept data, the compute load for the Logging Module will rise very quickly, indicating a
potential failure due to trying to log data at too high of a rate. Finally, the Logging Backlog is
the number of data write buffers that are waiting to be physically written to disk. When this
number grows above zero, it is indicative of a potential write related system failure.
Improved data logging write performance can be obtained by using multiple disk drives
configured in a Raid array. We typically use one of two Raid drive configurations. These Raid
configurations are explained below.
5.4.3.1 Raid 0
Raid 0 is the fastest Raid configuration, as it requires no redundant data to be written to the
drive. The downside to Raid 0 is that if any of the drives (typically 4 or 8 drives make up the Raid
set) fail, all of the data is lost and cannot be recovered. For this reason, Raid 0 should be used
with caution. The maximum write speed of a Raid 0 configured array is N times the sustained
write speed to a single disk drive, where N is the number of disk drives in the Raid 0 array.
Note: For a typical 1-‐2 TB 7200 RPM Sata drive, the sustained write speed for the disk is about
125 Megabytes per second.
5.4.3.2 Raid 10

Raid 10 is a hybrid Raid configuration that mirrors the disk drives used in the Raid set. If a total
of 4 disk drives are being used, then the logged data is written to 2 disk drives, and a mirrored
copy is written to the other 2 disk drives. This has the benefit of having full redundancy for a
single drive failure. Each mirrored half is configured in Raid 0 format, allowing for maximum
write speeds to each half. The disadvantage is that data is only written to half the total disk
drives available. The maximum write speed of a Raid 10 configured array is N/2 times the
sustained write speed to a single disk drive, where N is the number of disk drives in the Raid 10
array.
5.4.4 Reporting Module

This is the right most column of the System Health dashboard. The Report Module is responsible
for sending out the Sound Field data along with any alarms that have been triggered, to the HWI
interface (and other optional 3rd party interfaces). The compute load for the Reporting Module
grows when HWI (and/or other 3rd party interfaces, such as Panoptes) can’t receive the reports
as fast as they are being sent. The load value is typically 0% for normal operation, but will grow
to above 40%-‐50% when report data is being sent out too quickly to HWI. A similar metric is the
Report Backlog. This value will typically be 0 or 1, and represents the number of report packages
that are currently waiting to be sent to HWI. When this number grows to above 1, it is an
indication that either fibre shots are being sent out too quickly for HWI to display, or that alarms
are being generated and sent out too quickly.
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Lastly, the Reports Sent metric shows how many report packages have been sent out since the
HWI system was last restarted. This will include both Sound Field fibre shots, and Alarms that
have been generated and sent.
6 Main Menu
The Main Menu, displayed by clicking on the (Fotech) icon is shown below in Figure 36. It
contains a number of useful functions and utilities. These include
• Allowing the user to find out more information about the Helios controller and HWI
software version
• Sending a bug report email to Fotech support
• Viewing the currently available alarm list
• Editing the colour map
• Clearing the Sound Field display
• Clearing alarms from the Sound Field display
• Setting user display preferences
• Printing the main HWI window (This includes any dialogs that are currently visible)
• Log out as an Admin user

Figure 36
6.1 About this Helios unit

This menu item opens a dialog that provides you with information about the Helios controller
you are currently using. This will give you the name and serial number of the unit, software
version and software builds that have been most recently installed. Figure 37 shows an example
of this dialog.
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Figure 37
6.2 Report a problem

If there is a problem with the Helios controller, a bug has been found, or you simply want to ask
a question, this menu option will allow you to send an email directly to Fotech support staff.
Clicking on the Report a problem… menu item will launch operating system’s local email client,
and compose a new email addressed to techsupport@fotechsolutions.com. The email will
contain information about the Helios controller as shown in Figure 38 below.

Figure 38
Please make sure to include a good description of the issue, as well as your contact information
in case Fotech support personnel need to reach you. In addition, it may be helpful if system
diagnostic information is attached to this email. Refer to section 7.3.2 to learn how to download
system diagnostic information. Once downloaded, it can be attached to the support email.
6.3 View alarm list

As Alarms are generated, they are displayed in the Sound Field window. It may be desirable to
view more information about an individual Alarm. There are a number of ways to view more
detailed Alarm information. The first is to bring up a list of all the recent Alarms. To do this,
click on the View alarm list menu item. Figure 39 (below) shows an example of an Alarm list.
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Figure 39
To display detailed information about an individual Alarm, click on the desired Alarm in the list.
Figure 40 (below) shows an example of the Alarm info dialog. The title of the Alarm info dialog is
the time and distance where the alarm occurred. This window contains the alarm type, the
confidence of the displayed alarm type, the date and time, magnitude and width extent of the
alarm, the location (distance from the Helios controller) and finally, the velocity and acceleration
of the Alarm.

Figure 40
Note: For stationary alarms, the velocity and acceleration will always be 0.
In addition to displaying the Alarm info dialog from the Alarm list, the Alarm info dialog can be
displayed by clicking directly on the Alarm icon located at the top of the Waterfall display, the
associated time arrow (to the right of the time annotation) or the associated distance arrow (at
the bottom of the waterfall display).
If multiple Alarms are represented by any of these icons, then an Alarm list will be displayed
containing only the Alarms that are associated with the Alarm icon that was selected. Additional
information can be obtained by clicking on an item in the list.
6.3.1 Clearing Alarms from Sound Field

Located on the bottom left of the Alarm list dialog, there is an icon, which by clicking, allows you
to clear all of the alarms from the sound field. Keep in mind, that if you choose to clear the
Alarms from the sound field, you will permanently lose them, and cannot go back to view them
at any time. Figure 41 shows alarms being cleared.
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Figure 41
6.3.2 Filters
Figure 42 shows the Filters icon. Click on this icon to display the Alarm Filter. This is a way of
filtering out, or only viewing specific kinds of Alarms as they are being generated. You can filter
out Alarms by type, magnitude, width, or speed. Figure 43 shows this Filters dialog.

Figure 42

Figure 43
6.3.2.1 Restrict alarm types

Like the title suggests, once enabled the user can restrict the Alarms List to only display certain
types of Alarms. For example, if we wanted to see just Fibre Break Alarms, and remove all other
Alarms being generated, we would select Fibre Break.
Note: At the time of this manual, the following alarm types are available; Theft, Leak, Fence
Cutting, Lid Lift, Train, Rock Fall, Unknown, Broken Rail, Walking, Vehicle, Fibre Break,
Cable Handling, Gas Leak, Generic, Digging, Mechanized Digging, Fence Disturbance,
Heavy Equipment, Flat Wheel (on a train) and Fence Climbing.
6.3.2.2 Restrict magnitude, width, or speed

In addition, Alarms can be filtered by size, velocity or acceleration. To setup a filter, enter in the
minimum and maximum for the desired property and click the Filter button. To exit the Filter
dialog without applying the filter, click the Dismiss button.
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6.3.3 Remove Filter
To remove any filters that have been applied, click on the Remove filter icon in the lower right
corner of the Alarm list as shown in Figure 44. The list will update the Alarm list showing all
current Alarms.

Figure 44
Note: In the Preferences dialog, there is a property that sets how long an Alarm is displayed in
the Sound Field. If this duration is set too low, Alarms may disappear from the Sound Field
unexpectedly. Refer to section 6.7.3.7 for a description on how to setup the Alarm Clearing
interval.
6.4 Colour map

Please review section 2.3.2 for a detailed description of the functionality of the Colour map.
6.5 Clear sound field

Selecting this menu item will clear everything currently being displayed on the sound field.
6.6 Clearing alarms from sound field

As a short cut to the method discussed in section 6.3.1, Alarms can be cleared from the Sound
Field display by clicking on this item in the Main menu.
6.7 Preferences
Figure 45 shows the Preferences dialog. The preferences contained in this dialog are tied to the
web browser, and changes to any of the preferences will not affect any other web browsers
connected to the HWI web server, nor will these changes follow the user if they log in from a
different browser.
The following sections will describe the preferences contained in the Preferences dialog.
6.7.1 Time Zone

HWI provides the option to view time either in UTC time, or in local time (based on the time
zone of the user’s web browser). To change the displayed time zone, select the dropdown
menu and select either Local time or UTC (GMT)
Note: For HWI to actually display the correct time, it is required that the Helios controller is set to
UTC (GMT).
6.7.2 Units
HWI displays distance, velocity and acceleration values in various sections of the application.
These preferences are designed to set the units, as well as set the number of displayed decimal
places. This section allows you to select what units you would like to view these measurements
as well as the precision you would like them to be rounded to.
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Figure 45
6.7.3 Waterfall Display

The following preferences all relate to the Waterfall Display.
6.7.3.1 Orientation
The Sound Field can be displayed with the distance axis either Horizontal (the default) or
Vertical. To change the Sound Field orientation, select the dropdown menu and choose the
desired orientation.
6.7.3.2 Highlight colour

The Highlight colour is used to display the colour map overlay, as well as velocity tracking. To
change the Highlight colour, click on the coloured text field (with the Hex colour code). The
colour selection dialog appears as shown in Figure 46. Select the desired colour by clicking or
dragging the mouse inside the colour rectangle, and the colour intensity by clicking or dragging
the mouse in the intensity bar to the right. To dismiss the colour selection dialog, click the
mouse anywhere outside the dialog.

Figure 46
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6.7.3.3 Show alarms in fibre graph
This check box controls whether Alarms are displayed in the main Sound Field window. The
Alarms are displayed with an Alarm marker that sits on the baseline of the fibre graph window.
In addition, there is a small red triangle located at both the Alarm time (along the time axis), and
the Alarm distance (along the distance axis). If more information about an alarm is desired, The
alarm Info dialog can be displayed by clicking on any of these three items.
6.7.3.4 Show alarm dot in sound field

This check box controls whether a dot is displayed in the main Sound Field window at the time
and distance of the event. To display an Alarm dot, ensure that the Show event dot in sound
field check box is selected.
Note: If the ‘Show alarms in fibre graph’ check box is not selected, no alarm information will be
displayed in the Sound Field window, even if the ‘Show alarm dot in sound field’ check box is
selected.
6.7.3.5 Alarm dot size in sound field

This preference adjusts the size of the Alarm dot.
6.7.3.6 Alarm dot colour in sound field

This preference adjusts the colour of the Alarm dot. Refer to section 6.7.3.2 to adjust the
colour.
6.7.3.7 Alarm clearing interval

This preference sets the time that an Alarm can remain present in the Alarm list and Sound
Field. After this time, the alarm will be discarded and will no longer visible.
6.8 Printing
One handy feature with HWI is the ability to print a screen shot of whatever is being displayed in
the browser. This can be useful for capturing an important alarm or disturbance on paper to use
in a report, or for reference. Figure 47 shows the Print dialog from Google Chrome running on
Windows 7. This display will vary somewhat if using a different web browser and/or operating
system
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Figure 47
6.9 Logging Out of Secure Pages

To log into Factory mode or to just log off the system, select the Log Off menu item. This will
prompt the user to enter a new user name and password. To log out of the Admin mode, click
the Cancel button to return to the View Only mode. To log in as another user, enter the
appropriate user name and password.
7 Admin Menu
The Admin menu is divided up into 4 distinct sections. These are as follows:
• Basic system setup in the upper most section

• Alarm setup
• Diagnostics
• Helios system, user and HWI database management

Figure 48 shows the Admin menu. These four sections will be discussed in more detail in the
following pages.

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Basic System
Setup
Alarm Setup
Diagnostics
System, User &

Database Management

Figure 48
7.1 Basic System Setup

The Basic system setup section has already been touched on in the Getting Started section
(Section 4). This section involves setting up the optics module, ensuring that all the global
properties have been properly setup, as well as creating and setting up any required override
zones. As discussed above, the Basic system setup section will get the HWI system running, and
display a non-‐stream specific Sound Field display type (Raw Fibre Shot or Default as discussed in
the Getting Started section). The following paragraphs will discuss these topics in more detail.
7.1.1 Hardware Properties

The first dialog in this section is the Hardware Properties dialog. To display the Hardware
Properties dialog, click on the Admin menu and select Hardware properties… This dialog is used
to setup some initial properties for a system. Once set, these properties are typically not
changed. A number of the properties contained in this dialog cannot be edited by a Admin user,
and only display their current value.
This dialog consists of three tabs: Identity, Optics Module and Reporting. The following sections
will explain the properties contained in each of these tabs in more detail.
7.1.1.1 Identity
The Identity tab is shown below in Figure 49 below. The majority of these properties are only
editable by a Factory user. The following sections will describe each property in more detail.

Figure 49
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7.1.1.1.1 Name
This is the name of the Helios controller assigned at the factory. This name should be used in
any communication with Fotech support personnel. This field should be populated for
reference, but it is not a critical property.
7.1.1.1.2 Serial Number

This is the serial number of the Helios controller assigned at the factory. This field should be
populated for reference, but is not a critical property.
7.1.1.1.3 Panoptes Helios ID

This field indicates the Helios ID that a Panoptes server should use in order to connect to this
unit. This field is only required if it is desired to access the Helios controller using a Panoptes
server. If it will only be accessed by HWI, this property is not required.
7.1.1.1.4 UUID
This property is the UUID (Universally Unique ID which is a Unique Unit ID) assigned at the
factory. It is used to uniquely identify each Helios controller that is assembled. This field should
be populated for reference, but is not a critical property.
7.1.1.1.5 Custom Name

This property is used to assign a Custom Name to a Helios controller for communicating with a
3rd party interface. This property would be edited to comply with the requirements of the 3rd
party interface. For normal operation using HWI or Panoptes, this property is not required.
7.1.1.1.6 Custom ID

This property is used to assign a Custom ID to a Helios controller for communicating with a 3rd
party interface. It typically works in conjunction with the Custom Name property discussed
above. This property would be edited to comply with the requirements of the 3rd party
interface. For normal operation using HWI or Panoptes, this property is not required.
7.1.1.2 Optics Module

The Optics Module tab is shown below in Figure 50. All of the properties in this tab are set at
the factory, and are not editable by a Normal user. The following sections will describe each
property in more detail.
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Figure 50
7.1.1.2.1 Optics type

This property is used to describe the type of optics module used in the Helios controller.
Currently there are three different optics module types, GS (General Sensitivity), HS (High
Sensitivity) and most recently HSI (High Sensitivity – Improved). It can be very useful to know the
type of optics module in your Helios controller, particularly when communicating with Fotech
support personnel.
7.1.1.2.2 Optical module serial number

This is an optional property that is used to further identify the optics module contained in the
Helios controller. It is strictly used for reference and is not a required property.
7.1.1.2.3 Board type

This an optional property that is used to identify the laser pulser board used in the optics
module contained in the Helios controller. It is strictly used for reference and is not a required
property.
7.1.1.2.4 Board serial number

This is an optional property that is used to further identify the laser pulser board used in the
optics module contained in the Helios controller. It is strictly used for reference and is not a
required property.
7.1.1.2.5 Firmware version

This is an optional property that is used to identify the firmware version used in the Helios
controller. It is strictly used for reference and is not a required property.
7.1.1.2.6 Laser drive current

This is a required property that shows the existing laser drive current of the Helios controller.
This will be set at the factory, and should not be edited. If this value should become incorrect,
the Helios controller will significantly lose sensitivity. The laser drive current is included in the
45
Factory defaults, and if necessary, can be restored by performing a Reset to factory defaults
operation.
Note: Only perform the Reset from Factory Defaults operation as a last resort as it will reset
every property in Helios controller.
7.1.1.2.7 Trigger level

This is a required property that shows the existing trigger level of the digital acquisition board. It
sets the voltage level that the acquisition board triggers on. This property has been optimally
set at the factory and should not require further adjustment. If this value should become
incorrect, the Helios will not be able to trigger on incoming fibre shots, resulting in a distorted
raw signal display. The trigger level is included in the Factory defaults, and if necessary, can be
restored by performing a Reset to factory defaults operation
7.1.1.2.8 Box delay

This is a required property that shows the time delay required to have the first digitized sample
of a fibre shot located just outside the back panel of the Helios controller. Because there is a
significant amount of optical fibre inside the Helios controller, it takes time for the optical pulse
to reach the back panel. This amount of time is referred to as the Box delay. This property has
been set precisely at the factory and should not be adjusted.
7.1.1.2.9 TEC Controller Setpoint

This is a required property that adjusts the temperature of the TEC controller. This is a very
important property, and is used to keep the laser optimally tuned. If this property is
inadvertently altered, it can significantly reduce the amount of light energy that is output from
the optics module, thereby reducing sensitivity to fibre disturbances. To obtain optimal fibre
sensor response, the centre wavelength of the laser must stay in alignment with the receive
chain’s FBG (Fibre Bragg Grating).
If the laser’s centre wavelength does drift, adjusting the TEC 1 controller setting will bring the
laser’s centre wavelength back into alignment. This property will very rarely require field
adjustment. The TEC controller setting is adjusted with the assistance of an OSA (Optical
Spectrum Analyzer) to align the centre wavelength of the laser with the receive chain FBG. If an
OSA is unavailable, the center wavelength can still be coarsely aligned by observing the
amplitude of the raw fibre shots The optimal TEC setting occurs when the amplitude of the raw
fibre shots has been maximized, and changing the value of the TEC 1 controller in either
direction will result in a minor reduction in the amplitude of a raw fibre shot.
7.1.1.3 Reporting
The Reporting tab is shown below in Figure 51. The properties contained in the Reporting tab
have nothing to do with the standard HWI system, and are only used to communicate with a
Panoptes server, and/or a 3rd party interface. The following sections will describe each property
in more detail.
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Figure 51
7.1.1.3.1 XML Submission type

This section discusses the information that the Helios controller can send out to a 3rd party
interface. This data is formatted into an ASCII XML package, and sent to the specified URLs.
7.1.1.3.1.1 Submit disturbance and system alarms

To enable the submission of disturbance or system alarms, the appropriate checkbox should be
checked and a URL to send the alarm to must be specified.
7.1.1.3.1.2 Submit heartbeats

To enable the submission of heartbeats, the appropriate checkbox should be checked and, as
with the alarms, a URL must be specified. In addition a heartbeat rate must be specified which
will determine how often a heartbeat is sent.
7.1.1.3.2 Binary submission type

This section is used to send disturbance alarms and Sound Field data to a Panoptes server. If
there is no requirement to communicate with a Panoptes server, this section is not required.
7.1.1.3.2.1 Binary host

This property contains two fields, the URL of the Panoptes server, and the Panoptes server port.
This property is typically set at the factory for a typical Panoptes server, and should not be
edited unless there is a non-‐standard communications requirement.
7.1.1.3.2.2 Submit disturbance alarms check box

This check box needs to be selected if alarms are to be sent to a Panoptes server.
7.1.1.3.2.3 Submit fibre shots check box

This check box needs to be selected if Sound Field data is to be sent to a Panoptes server.
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7.1.2 Optical Channel Properties dialog
The typical deployment scenario for a Helios controller is to have a single fibre sensor attached
to the back panel. There are certain situations where it is advantageous to have multiple fibre
sensors attached to a Helios controller. Because the Helios controller can only acquire and
process a single fibre sensor at a time, a device is used to sequentially connect each fibre to the
Helios controller. This is known as an Optical Multiplexor. Because each fibre sensor is different,
it requires its own set of properties. HWI handles multiple fibre sensors by defining a unique
Optical Channel for each fibre sensor connected to the Helios system.
In addition to having multiple fibre sensors attached to a single Helios controller, HWI 4 has
been extended to allow for simultaneous detection and alarming on multiple disturbance types.
This requires multiple processing streams to alarm on multiple disturbance types. There is a
core set of properties that are defined for each Optical Channel. Additional processing
properties are defined for each Processing Stream used to satisfy the alarming requirements.
The Optical Channel Properties dialog, as shown in Figure 52, contains this core set of properties
for each Optical Channel.
Note: The Processing Stream specific properties are discussed later in the Disturbance Detection
and Alarm Setup section of the user manual.
This dialog is divided up into two sections, the header section, and the tab section, and is
discussed below.
7.1.2.1 Header Section

The header section contains the very basic properties associated with each an Optical Channel.
7.1.2.1.1 Name
This property is just a descriptive name given to the current Optical Channel. In a deployment
with multiple fibre sensors connected to the Helios controller, Names would be given to identify
each Optical Channel uniquely. For a single fibre sensor deployment, the Name is less
important, and defaults to Optical Channel 1.
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Header Section
Tab Section

Figure 52
7.1.2.1.2 Physical fibre length

This property should be set to the physical length of the fibre sensor. As discussed previously, it
may be advantageous to set this distance slightly longer than the actual fibre sensor length to
observe the raw fibre shot character at the end of the fibre. This can be used to see if there are
any large optical reflections at the end of the fibre sensor that need to be dealt with. After any
large reflections have been removed, this property should be set back to the physical length of
the fibre sensor.
7.1.2.1.3 Refractive index

Each fibre sensor has a specific refractive index (RI) based on its unique construction. The
Refractive Index is used to properly calibrate the speed of light (SOL) in the fibre. Because the
Helios system operates solely with time delays, it is critical that the correct SOL is used for the
fibre sensor. Rather than entering in the SOL directly, the RI is entered instead. The fibre sensor
specifications should include the RI, and it should be entered into the HWI interface. Typical RI’s
will range between 1.468 and 1.48 depending on the glass used in the fibre sensor.
Note: Not having the correct RI for the fibre sensor will introduce errors in distance calibration
measurements.
7.1.2.1.4 Fibre Splice

It is not uncommon to have fibre breaks after a system has been setup and commissioned. In
order to splice the fibre, an additional length of optical fibre needs to be spliced into the fibre
sensor. When this happens, all distance correlations, as well as all zone distance definitions will
be displaced by the amount of additional fibre being inserted. To remove this distance
displacement, the user can inform HWI of the fibre splice. To perform this task, click on the
Insert Splice button in the header area of the Optical Channel Properties dialog. The Fibre Splice
dialog appears as shown Figure 53. Enter in the exact position of the fibre splice, and the
49
amount of fibre that was inserted into the fibre sensor cable. Once entered, click the Save
Button to register the fibre splice.

Figure 53
7.1.2.1.5 Zero Point

This property sets the zero distance point on the Sound Field display. Typically, this value is set
to zero, thereby setting the zero distance point to the back panel of the Helios controller. In
situations where it is desirable to have the zero point at some distance farther down the fibre
sensor, set the Zero Point to the desired distance.
Note: The section of the fibre sensor before the Zero Point can still be monitored, but will have
negative distances displayed on the Sound Field. Also, a non-‐zero Zero Point is used only for the
Sound Field display Any distances defined in system dialog boxes will refer to the actual (non-‐
adjusted) distances.
A good example showing the use of the Zero Point property would be when a well bore is being
monitored. By setting the Zero Point to the fibre distance at the well’s KB (Kelly Bushing), the
Sound Field would display a zero distance at the KB, and then all subsequent distances would
equate to the depth below the KB.
7.1.2.1.6 Panoptes Fibre ID

For normal HWI operation, this property is not required. However, when the system is used in
conjunction with a Panoptes server, the Helios controller needs to send data to the correct fibre
id as defined in the Panoptes server. This property is not editable by a Normal user, and if
required, will have been setup by a Fotech engineer during system commissioning.
7.1.2.2 Tab Section

The Tab section consists of seven tabs that contain all of the global (non-‐Stream specific)
properties for the Optical Channel. The following sub-‐sections will describe these properties in
more detail. These descriptions will be divided up into seven groups, with each group
corresponding to a tab in the Optical Channel Properties dialog.
7.1.2.2.1 Optics Properties

Figure 52 (above) shows the Optics tab that contains the editable HWI optics properties. Optics
properties for each Helios controller are set at the factory. These are the same values included
in the System Data sheet provided with each Helios controller. The Optics tab is arranged into
two groups, Laser and EDFAs.
7.1.2.2.1.1 Laser Properties

The laser properties are used to control the operational characteristics of the laser, which pulses
the fibre in order to produce the actual fibre response.
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7.1.2.2.1.1.1 PRF (Pulse Repetition Frequency)
The PRF determines how frequently the Helios controller sends a pulse of light into the fibre
sensor. It is equivalent to the sampling frequency, which dictates the maximum frequency that
can be detected by the HWI interface. The fibre sensor length determines the maximum PRF
that can be set due to the fact that a pulse can’t be launched into the fibre sensor until the
previous pulse has exited the fibre sensor. The equation for determining the maximum PRF for
a given fibre sensor length is:
PRF (Hz) * RI * 2 * (Fibre Sensor Length (m) + 100 m) <= Speed of Light
Where RI is the Refractive Index. In general, for RI’s close to 1.5, the max PRF is slightly less than
100,000 / Fibre Sensor Length (m).
Note: Increasing the PRF will increase the response bandwidth, but will also increase the
compute load, as there are more fibre shots to be processed in a given time interval.
Note: Any integer value can be entered into the PRF field. A drop down list is provided to the
right of the field populated with the most commonly used PRFs. Select a value from this list to
quickly populate the PRF field.
7.1.2.2.1.1.2 Pulse Width

The larger the Pulse Width, the more light is launched into the fibre sensor, and the more
sensitive the system is with increased distance. However, reducing the Pulse Width improves
HWI’s ability to accurately locate an event disturbance (increased location accuracy) and to
distinguish between two nearby event disturbances (increased spatial resolution). The nominal
Pulse Width is 50 ns, as this is a good compromise between maximizing spatial resolution and
system sensitivity to event disturbances on reasonably short fibres (< 10 km). As fibre sensor
lengths increase toward our maximum of 40 km, the Pulse Width needs to be increased to 200
ns in order to alarm on event disturbances at longer distances.
Note: Depending on the specific deployment conditions, it may be necessary to increase the
pulse width in order to detect quieter disturbances.
7.1.2.2.1.1.3 Laser bias current

The Laser Bias Current sets the amplitude of the light pulse being launched by the source laser.
This value is not typically changed from the factory defaults, and for most deployments it should
be left at the factory default.
7.1.2.2.1.2 EDFA Properties

The acronym EDFA stands for Erbium Doped Fibre Amplifier. These are the optical amplifiers
that the Helios system uses to set the optimal pulse amplitude, as well as to optimally amplify
the very low level backscattered light. These are rarely changed from the factory defaults, and if
changes are required, experienced Fotech field engineers should make these changes
accordingly. The Current properties control the level of amplification for each EDFA. EDFA 1
controls the intensity of the light pulse entering the fibre, whereas EDFA 2 and EDFA 3 amplify
the backscattered light from the event disturbance.
7.1.2.2.2 Data Capture Properties
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Figure 54 shows the Data Capture tab that contains the HWI Data Capture properties. Data
Capture properties allow the user to configure what data the Helios system will acquire, and
how that data is acquired. The following sections describe the Data Capture properties in more
detail.

Figure 54
7.1.2.2.2.1 Monitor Start and End

The Helios system is designed to monitor and analyze the entire length of the fibre. This extends
from the back panel of the Helios controller up to the physical fibre length. In many situations,
it may be advantageous to restrict the monitored zone to a subset of the total fibre sensor
length. Entering in a positive value for Monitor Start will restrict the data being digitized to only
include data after this distance. This is useful when there is no requirement to monitor the fibre
from the back panel out to the desired Monitor Start. Similarly, the Monitor End can be adjusted
to ignore the end portion of the fibre sensor. The maximum value for Monitor End is the
Physical Fibre Length. Setting this to a value less than this will ignore the end of the fibre sensor
and restrict the data that is acquired and processed to a subset of the entire fibre sensor,
thereby reducing the compute load on the Helios controller.
7.1.2.2.2.2 Sample Rate

The Sample Rate is the rate that the analog to digital conversion (ADC) board samples the
incoming analog data. The slowest available rate is 150 mega samples per second (MSPS), and
the fastest available rate is 180 MSPS. Increasing the Acquisition Sample Rate will increase the
compute load; whereas lowering it will decrease the compute load. Increasing the Acquisition
Sample Rate will increase the number of data points over a given distance of fibre, thereby
reducing the spatial sample spacing.
Note: The default, and recommended value for the Acquisition Sample Rate is 160 MSPS.
7.1.2.2.2.3 Number of Samples

This is a simple textual display of the number of spatial data samples covering the monitored
section of the fibre sensor as calculated using a combination of monitor start and end and
sample rate.
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7.1.2.2.2.4 Input voltage
The Input Voltage property is used to maximize the amplitude of the raw fibre shot without
clipping data in the region of interest. Depending on the sensitivity of the optics module, the
maximum amplitude of the analog voltage can vary between 200 mv and 4 V at the beginning of
the fibre sensor. Using the Raw Fibre Display Mode, you can view this raw fibre shot response.
The default scale of the Raw Fibre display should already be set to 32,767. If it isn’t, it is
recommended that it be set to this number, as this is the maximum value of the digitizer card.
From here, the Input Voltage should be set as low as possible without clipping the raw fibre shot
in the zone of interest (the section of the fibre sensor that you want to monitor). Clipping
occurs when any data sample along the fibre sensor has amplitudes in excess of 32,767. If
clipping occurs, increase the Input Voltage using the drop down list. The optimal raw fibre shot
will have maximum amplitude, while not clipping any data samples within the region of interest.
7.1.2.2.2.5 Shot normalization checkbox

Shot normalization attempts to normalize all fibre shots to a constant value. This can reduce
random shot-‐to-‐shot amplitude variations of the raw fibre shots, which can improve the SNR of
the system. To turn on Shot normalization, ensure this checkbox is checked. Shot normalization
is not enabled by default.
7.1.2.2.2.6 Shot normalization window start and end

By default, the Shot normalization window extends over the entire monitored section. It is
sometimes desirable to restrict the normalization operation to a subsection of the fibre sensor
that is void of any major disturbances. In this way, the normalization routine is only correcting
for minor amplitude variations due to the optics module, and not due to actual signal. To
restrict the Shot normalization window to a subsection of the fibre sensor, type in valid
distances into the Start and End text boxes, ensuring that the Start distance is greater than the
Monitor Start, and that the End distance is greater than the Start distance and less than the
Monitor End.
Note: The string values ‘start’ and ‘end’ are accepted in the start and end textboxes respectively,
and will lock the shot normalization window the start and/or end of the specified monitored
region.
7.1.2.2.3 Processing Properties

The Processing module (along with the Data Capture module discussed above) prepares the
data for input into the individual stream processing flows. HWI does not work directly with the
time domain data from the optical unit. Instead, all of the processing occurs on the power
spectral of the raw input data. Figure 55 contains the basic power spectra creation workflow.
As can be seen, the raw data from the optics module is first digitized over the Monitor interval,
using the desired sample rate and input voltage. Then it is optionally normalized on a shot-‐by-‐
shot basis. The instantaneous power spectrum is then computed in the FFT module using the
FFT Size as well as the DC Cutoff frequency. This creates the power spectra data that is used as
input into the individual processing streams.
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Figure 55
Figure 56 shows the Data Capture tab that contains the HWI global Processing properties. The
following sections describe the Data Capture properties in more detail.

Figure 56
7.1.2.2.3.1 FFT size

This property sets the size of the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) used in performing the spectral
analysis. The FFT block is a fundamental component of the Helios processing system. All
processing is currently done in the power spectra domain by first transforming the time domain
data into the frequency domain using an FFT. There are tradeoffs to keep in mind when deciding
on the FFT size to use. Shorter FFT sizes, on the order of 64 to 128 samples, will provide better
time domain resolution, but at the expense of smearing out spectral resolution. Larger FFT
sizes, on the order of 1024 samples, will provide much better spectral resolution, but at the
expense of reducing the temporal (time) resolution. The tradeoff should be made depending on
the characteristics of the signal you are attempting to detect. Leaks should use longer FFT sizes,
as there is no need to retain time resolution, as leaks are typically time invariant. Impulsive type
disturbances require better time resolution, so using shorter FFT sizes will provide this. Typical
values of FFT size range in the vicinity of 256 up to 1024.
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In addition to just changing the frequency resolution and time dynamics of the input signal,
changing the FFT size can have a noticeable impact on the compute load for a given fibre sensor.
The majority of the signal processing is performed on the power spectra data, which is the
output of the FFT operation. Although larger FFT blocks do take more compute cycles than
smaller ones, it does not actually double the processing load to double the size of an FFT block.
However, doubling the FFT size will halve the number of FFT blocks, subsequently halving the
number of detection statistics computed in a given period of time. This will provide a noticeable
reduction in the compute load for a given fibre sensor, at the expense of slightly reducing
temporal resolution.
7.1.2.2.3.2 Analysis DC cutoff

The Analysis DC cutoff is used to remove the very low frequencies from the signal prior to
computing the output signal. A typical value for this property is on the order of 4-‐5 Hz.
7.1.2.2.3.3 Frame stacking toggle

This property is used to reduce the compute load on the system in deployments with long fibre
sensors, high PRF values and/or extensive signal processing requirements. Frame stacking
should only be used when other Stream specific data reductions methods will not suffice. To
turn on Frame stacking, ensure that the Frame stacking toggle is checked. Once this toggle is
checked, the Frame stacking factor drop down menu becomes editable.
7.1.2.2.3.4 Frame stacking factor

Frame stacking reduces the compute load by averaging multiple power spectra together prior to
performing the remainder of the processing flow. The Frame stacking factor defines the
number of power spectra that get averaged. With Frame stacking enabled, click the drop down
menu, and select a value greater than one to define the number of power spectra to get
averaged. Frame stacking has the affect of smearing out temporal resolution in a similar fashion
to increasing the FFT Size, but without the benefit of increasing frequency resolution. The
higher the Frame stacking factor, the lower the systems temporal resolution will be. In most
cases, the Frame stacking factor should be kept as low as possible.
Note: Some of the processing routines are still computed prior to averaging the power spectra,
so reduction of the compute load may not be as significant as expected. The main benefit of
using Frame Stacking vs. simply increasing the FFT Size is to maintain the temporal dynamics of
the Temporal Decomposition module, as discussed in section 7.3.1.3.3.
Note: Frame stacking should not be used when the system is required to alarm on very short
time duration disturbances.
7.1.2.2.3.5 Sound Field Update rate

This property is used to control the rate at which Sound Field data is displayed on the main HWI
display screen. The units of this property are Hz. The value that is entered by the user is only an
approximation to the actual display rate.
The reason this is an approximation is that the Sound Field update rate must be an integer
fraction of the maximum Sound Field update rate. This is defined by the ratio of the optics
module’s PRF divided by the FFT size. An example of this is, if the PRF is 20,000 Hz, and the FFT
size is 1024, then the maximum Sound Field Update rate would be 19.53125 Hz. If the user
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entered in 10 Hz, than the actual Sound Field Update rate would be 9.765625 Hz (max Update
rate divided by 2). The actual values for Update rate would be the maximum value divided by 2,
3, 4 etc. The maximum update rate is displayed underneath the Update rate text box. If you set
an Update rate larger than this value, it will automatically default to the calculated maximum
value.
It is always desirable to display the Sound Field at the maximum rate when tuning the Alarm
detection threshold properties, as this will provide the maximum time resolution in the Sound
Field display. It is typically not always possible to display the Sound Field at the maximum
update rate. When the Sound Field Update rate is set lower than the maximum update rate, not
all of the data values are displayed on the Sound Field. Instead, the maximum value of the
current display type for each fibre location over the period between Sound Field updates will be
displayed.
Note: Setting the Sound Field Update rate too high will cause significant delays in the Sound
Field display. Setting the Sound Field Update rate to the maximum value is typically only done in
the Playback module using a Playback Speed multiplier of less than one. The Sound Field Update
rate can be set higher if few data samples are being sent to HWI.
7.1.2.2.3.6 Fibre shot decimation factor

With a long fibre sensor, each fibre shot can contain thousands of data points. Given a
conventional screen size, there are typically only a thousand or so pixels available to draw a
fibre shot. As a result, it is not uncommon to have to decimate 20-‐30 samples onto a single
pixel. If you know in advance that you don’t plan to zoom into a short section of fibre, it can
save a great deal of bandwidth, as well as client compute load, if the Helios controller decimates
the samples prior to sending them off to the HWI interface. The Fibre shot decimation factor is
an integer value, which is used to decimate the samples in the drawn fibre shot. Setting this
property to 1 sends all the fibre shot samples from the Helios controller to the HWI interface.
Note: If multiple web clients are connected to the Helios controller, ALL web clients will have
their fibre shots decimated, as this is done on the Helios controller, and not on the web browser.
7.1.2.2.4 Data Logging properites

Figure 57 shows the Data Logging tab that contains the HWI Data Logging properties. The
following sections describe the Data Logging properties in more detail.
56

Figure 57
The Data Logging module is designed to allow the user to log (write to disk) raw data over the
entire monitored fibre section, a user-‐defined subset of the entire monitored fibre section, or
over one or more pre-‐defined zones. In addition, the current Sound Field data display type can
be logged to the selected data-‐logging disk. The data format is an optimized internal data
format called FDS (Fotech Data Stream). These files are self-‐contained, and contain all the
property information required to allow them to be used with the Playback module.
Note: Sound Field data can only be logged over the entire monitored fibre section. It does not
work with a subset of the monitored fibre section or with a zone.
The main thing to look out for is to make sure that the data being logged does not exceed the
maximum sustained write speed of the disk drive being written to. Pay attention to the write
speed in the System Health dashboard. If it approaches the maximum sustained write speed of
the target disk drive, reduce the amount of data that is being logged to disk.
The following sections describe the individual properties in more detail.
7.1.2.2.5 Data Logging Directory

The Data Logging Directory will be created as a subdirectory of /HeliosData where logged data
will be written to. This allows the user to create a hierarchy of directories to store raw data in,
making it easier to find the desired FDS file after it has been logged.
7.1.2.2.6 Logging Filename

This is the text string that will be used, in conjunction with a timestamp and relevant zone name
or sound field type to form the name of the FDS file. It is useful to enter a descriptive text string
to help you locate FDS files after they have been logged.
7.1.2.2.7 Raw Logging Properties

This section contains a toggle field to enable or disable global raw logging, as well as the start
and end distance to be logged.
57
To enable global raw data logging check the Raw logging check box and provide a start and end
distance in the appropriate fields. The strings ‘start’ and ‘end’ will be accepted in the start and
end fields respectively and means that the value will match the monitor start and/or end.
Note: These text fields are case sensitive. Meaning, if you type in “Start” or “End” you will be
given a warning to change them. You must type these in as lower case words.
7.1.2.2.8 Sound Field Logging Properties

In addition to logging raw data to disk, HWI also allows the processed Sound Field data to be
written to disk. The size of a Sound Field data is significantly lower than that of a raw data file,
so there is no ability to define a distance subset of the currently monitored section.
To enable Sound Field data logging check the Sound field logging checkbox.
Note: Sound field logging can occur concurrently with global logging but will reduce the amount
of raw data that can be logged to disk.
Note: If the Sound Field display type is dynamically changed while Sound Field data is being
logged, the change will be reflected in the Sound Field data file. A new FDS file is not created
when the display type is changed.
7.1.2.2.9 Fibre Break properties

In many mission critical system deployments, it is imperative that a Fibre Break alarm is
triggered when the fibre sensor is severed or severely damaged. The Fibre Break module is
designed to do just this. Figure 58 shows the Fibre Break tab that contains the HWI Fibre Break
properties.

Figure 58
The Fibre Break module works by scanning the fibre response, and identifying the maximum
amplitude discontinuity (break detection value) along the length of the fibre sensor. Because
large amplitude discontinuities can occur normally on a fibre sensor without a break, and these
discontinuities can be similar in magnitude to a valid fibre break, it can sometimes be difficult to
clearly detect a fibre break. If there is a clear distinction between the maximum amplitude
discontinuity of normal fibre sensor and that of a fibre sensor with a break, then it is easy to
specify the break alarm threshold, which if exceeded will generate a break alarm indicating the
58
position along the fibre where the break occurred. However, a problem occurs when there is
not a clean boundary between the magnitudes of the break detection value between normal
fibre sensors and broken fibre sensors. Ideally the lowest values of the break detection value
from valid breaks will always be higher than the highest values of the break detection value from
non-‐broken fibre sensors. In other words, if the separation between the mean values for broken
fibre and unbroken fibre is greater than the sum of the half-‐error bars, there will always be a
clear distinction between a break condition and a normal fibre sensor. When the mean values
are not separated by the sum of the half-‐error bars, there is overlap in the distribution curves,
and now, regardless of what value the break alarm threshold is set to, there will be a possibility
of either false positives (detecting a break in a normal fibre sensor) or false negatives (failing to
detect a valid fibre sensor break).
The following sections describe the Fibre Break properties in more detail.
7.1.2.2.9.1 Enable fibre break check toggle

To enable the Fibre Break module, ensure that this check box has been checked. Once this
check box is checked, the remaining Fibre Break properties are enabled and become editable.
7.1.2.2.9.2 Checking period

This value determines the time between successive fibre break checks. Reducing this value will
increasing the compute load required for the fibre break detection module and vice versa. This
value should be set as large as possible, while still providing an acceptable response time for
detecting fibre sensor breaks.
7.1.2.2.9.3 Starting and ending position

These values should be set to specify the length along the fibre where fibre break detection will
occur. The typical values would cover the distance corresponding to the back panel of the
Helios controller up to a distance just before the physical end of the fibre sensor.
Note: Ensure that the Starting Position is set such that the reflection at the back panel of the
Helios controller does not trigger a false fibre break.
7.1.2.2.9.4 Low and High threshold values

As was mentioned above, when there is not a clear distinction between a valid fibre sensor
break and a normal fibre sensor, there is no value for the break alarm threshold that will
confidently detect the presence of a fibre sensor break. In this case, we need to define two new
properties, the Low threshold and the High threshold. The Low Threshold is a value that
guarantees that there is no fibre break. It would typically get set below the lowest fibre break
value produced from a valid fibre break (the lowest value of the probability distribution curve
for a valid break). The High Threshold is the value that guarantees that there is a fibre break. It
would typically get set to a value above the highest fibre break value produced from a normal
fibre (the highest value of the probability distribution curve for a normal fibre sensor).
In order to generate a fibre break alarm, the Fibre Break Value is first converted into an Alarm
Confidence value by comparing it against a Low Threshold and a High Threshold as follows:
Alarm Confidence = (Break Detection Value -‐ Low Threshold) / (High Threshold -‐ Low Threshold)
x 100%
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As can be seen, the Alarm Confidence will be 0% when the Fibre Break Value is equal to the Low
Threshold and will be 100% when it is equal to the High Threshold (and will increase
continuously in the range between the two). The High Threshold value would be set to a value
that guarantees a fibre break. I.e., there is 100% confidence of a real fibre break if the
amplitude discontinuity is greater than or equal to the High Threshold. The Low Threshold value
would be set to a value that guarantees that there is no fibre break. I.e., there is 0% confidence
of a real fibre break if the amplitude discontinuity is less than or equal to the Low Threshold.
In situations where there is a clear boundary between a real fibre break event, and no fibre
break event, (I.e., the Low Threshold value is greater than the High Threshold value) the Low
and High Threshold values should be set to the same value that is midway between the original
two values. In situations where there is overlap between amplitude discontinuities caused by
normal fibre response vs. an actual fibre break, (I.e., the Low Threshold value is less than the
High Threshold value) the Low and High Threshold values should be set differently (more on this
below).
7.1.2.2.9.5 Reporting threshold

The Reporting Threshold specifies the point at which alarm reports will be generated. If the
Alarm Confidence value is greater than or equal to the Reporting Threshold (and strictly greater
than 0%), then a break alarm will be generated. The Reporting Threshold would be set high
enough to prevent false fibre break alarms from being generated, but set low enough to ensure
that any valid fibre breaks are detected. Typically, the Reporting Threshold would be set near
50% to split the difference between the Low and High Threshold.
Here is a suggested process that could be followed to optimize the setting of these properties.
1. Set the Monitor End to a distance value that extends a few thousand metres beyond the
physical end of the fibre sensor.
2. Configure the starting fibre break properties as follows:
• Set the Starting Position near the beginning of the fibre sensor, and the Ending
Position near the Monitor End value.
• Checking Period = 1 – 5 seconds
• Low Threshold = 0.0
• High Threshold = 100.0
• Reporting Threshold = 0%

3. Start the system and ensure that fibre break alarms are being consistently generated at
the correct location (which is the physical end of the fibre). If they are not, then extend
the Monitor End further past the physical end of the fibre until they are-‐-‐-‐but be as
conservative as possible with this extension. If the fibre break alarms were consistently
appearing at the correct location to begin with, then the Monitor End should now be
reduced as much as possible while still maintaining a consistently correct location for
the break alarms.
4. Take note of the typical range of fibre break alarm values being generated. These are
displayed in the fibre break alarm dialog (and if they are not, then they can be inferred
from the displayed Alarm Confidence value by simply dropping the percent sign). This
range of values is going to be typical of a fibre break. Make a note of the smallest such
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value. The Low Threshold should be set a bit below this value (preferably by at least two
standard deviations), but not until after the rest of the steps below have been
completed.
5. Adjust the Monitor End and Fibre Break End Position to your desired Monitor End,
making sure it is in front of the physical end of the fibre sensor.
6. Start the system and take note of the typical range of fibre break alarm values being
generated. This range of values is going to be typical of a normal fibre. Make a note of
the largest such value. The High Threshold should be set a bit above this value
(preferably by at least two standard deviations).
7. Compare the values obtained for the Low and High Thresholds in steps 4 and 6 above. If
the Low Threshold is larger than the High Threshold, then there is a clear boundary
between real fibre break events and no fibre break events, and the two Thresholds can
both be set to the midpoint between these two values (and the Reporting Threshold can
be set to any value between 0% and 100%). Otherwise, if the High Threshold is larger
than the Low Threshold, then the Reporting Threshold needs to be manually tuned to be
just high enough that false alarms are prevented from appearing when the system is
running. If false alarms are still coming through with a Reporting Threshold of 100%,
then increase the High Threshold by doubling its distance from the Low Threshold, reset
the Reporting Threshold to 50% and continue to tune it upwards as before.
8. It may be desirable as a final step to recalculate the High Threshold so that the
Reporting Threshold determined in step 7 now becomes 50%. The explicit formula for
that would be:

New High Threshold = Low Threshold + 2 * (Reporting Threshold / 100%) * (Old High
Threshold – Low Threshold)

Experimentation is required to find the optimal settings, but this process should assist in getting
the fibre break detection routine optimized for more fibre deployments.
7.1.2.2.10 Defining Suppression zones

There are situations where it can be advantageous to null out the response for a subsection of
the fibre sensor. This can be due to excessive nuisance disturbances in a particular subsection
that is impeding the system’s ability to alarm on desired disturbances. It is for this reason that
the Suppression zone module was developed. Figure 59 shows the Suppression tab that allows
Suppression zones to be defined for the current Optical Channel. Suppression zones can be
defined to affect all streams, or be defined to affect only a specific stream.
To create a new suppression zone, follow this process:
1. Click on the streams drop down menu, and select the stream to be associated with this
Suppression zone. If all streams are to be associated with this Suppression zone, then
select All Streams.
2. Click on the green plus icon.
3. Enter in the desired start and end distances for this Suppression zone into the new text
boxes. The start distance must be greater than or equal to 0, and the end distance must
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be greater than the start distance, and less than or equal to the physical fibre length for
the current Optical Channel. Once the distances have been entered
4. Repeat steps 1 through 3 to create additional Suppression zones
5. Click the Apply or the Save buttons to save the changes.

Figure 59
To edit an existing Suppression zone, select the stream that it is associated with. Edit the start
and/or end distance appropriately. Click the Apply or the Save buttons to save the changes.
To delete an existing Suppression zone, select the stream that it is associated with in order to
display it, and then click the red X icon to the right of the end distance text box. Click on the
Apply or the Save buttons to save the changes.
Note: Suppression zones are visible only in the Stream Detection Value display type. They are
not visible in any of the other Sound Field display types.
7.1.2.2.11 Alarm Reports

Figure 60 shows the Alarm Reports tab that controls which Alarm Reports are generated and
submitted to an HWI client, a Panoptes server or a 3rd party interface. The following paragraphs
describe how to select and submit Alarm Reports.
62

Figure 60
As can be seen in Figure 60 (above), in this example, there has been a single Alarm Report
created called User1. In this example, the alarm report User1 is not active. In order to generate
and submit an Alarm Report, it must first be made active by clicking on its check box and
enabling it. Once it is enabled (made active), the system will generate and submit the Alarm
Report only if the Submit alarms check box is enabled.
Only streams associated with active Alarm Reports are processed, and are the only streams
available to view in the Sound Field. Therefore, not only does the stream need be created, it
needs to be associated to an active Alarm Report. If no Alarm Reports exist, one will have to be
created. So, you may need to create an Alarm Report, even if you don’t want to actually
generate and submit Alarm Reports. It is quite common to create an Alarm Report but not
submit it during initial property tuning. This allows you to watch the indicator displays while
tuning the properties without flooding the system with Alarm Reports.
Helios controllers are typically shipped from the factory with at least one pre-‐configured Alarm
Report. This way, if a new Alarm Detection template is created, it only needs to be associated to
a stream that is associated to an active Alarm Report in order to view its Alarm Detection Value
in the Sound Field.
Enable each of the Alarm Reports that the system is to alarm on. To quickly clear all the active
Alarm Reports, click on the Clear All link at the bottom of the Alarm Report tab.
Having multiple active Alarm Reports implies processing multiple streams in parallel, which can
quickly increase the compute load. Care should be taken to always activate Alarm Reports one
at a time to monitor the increase in compute load and prevent the system from becoming
overloaded. If the system cannot handle the required compute load, some form of data
decimation will have to take place. Please refer to sections 7.1.2.2.3 and 7.3.1.2.3 for a more
detailed discussion on two ways to reduce the compute load on the Helios system.
7.1.3 Working with Zones

Zones are a very powerful feature of the HWI system. They are user-‐defined sections of the
fibre sensor that have the following characteristics.
• They can be directly zoomed into with a single mouse click
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• They can be instantly logged with a single mouse click
• They can optionally have unique processing properties applied to them on a per stream
basis, allowing them to process data differently than the global fibre sensor properties.
To access the Zones dialog, click on the Admin drop down menu, and select Zones… Figure 61
shows the Zones dialog with no zones defined yet.

Figure 61
7.1.3.1 Defining a New Zone

To create a new zone, click the green plus symbol near the right edge of the Zones dialog. Figure
62 shows a popup that is displayed allowing a name to be entered for the newly created zone.

Figure 62
Once the new name has been selected, the Sound Field display updates showing two drag
handles, the left for the start distance and the right for the end distance of the new zone. If the
exact distances are known, they can be textually entered into the respective text fields
accompanying the drag handles. Otherwise, the zone’s extents can be defined graphically by
dragging the zone handles using the mouse to the desired start and end positions for the newly
created zone. Once the start and end distances have been entered (either textually or
graphically) click the Submit button, which appears in the upper right corner of the Sound Field
display to finalize the creation of the new zone. Figure 63 shows how the HWI window changes
when the zone extents have been defined.
64

Figure 63
Upon selecting the Submit button, the zone is added to the Zone dialog as shown in Figure 64,
and the zone icon showing its extents is displayed on the Sound Field display at the top of the
waterfall section. This procedure needs to be repeated for each new zone to be defined on the
fibre sensor.

Figure 64
HWI does not allow for zones to overlap on the fibre sensor. This can occur when a portion of a
new zone overlaps an existing zone, or the entire extent of a new zone overlaps (sits inside the
extents of) an existing zone. In either case, either the existing zone or the new zone needs to be
edited to remove the overlap. This is best explained with a couple of examples. Let’s say we
need a new zone (Zone2) that extends from 300 m to 550 m. When Zone2 is created using
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those distance extents, it will overlap Zone1. Upon clicking the Submit button, a warning
message is displayed indicating that Zone2 overlaps Zone1 as shown in Figure 65. In order to
resolve this, either click Truncate Self to shift the right edge of Zone2 to the left to remove the

Figure 65
overlap, or click Truncate Sibling(s) to shift the left edge of Zone1 to the right. Figure 66 shows
how the zones look if Truncate Sibling is selected. The left edge of Zone 1 was changed from
300 m to 350 m in order to remove the overlap.

Figure 66
Now let’s create a new zone (Zone3) that extends from 350 m to 500 m. Zone3 is located
completely inside Zone2. When Zone3 is submitted, a warning message is displayed indicating
that Zone3 is completely within another zone as shown in Figure 63.

Figure 63
66
The two options are to cancel creation of the new zone, or click Split Sibling in order to create an
additional zone (Zone4), which will be to the right of Zone 3. Figure 67 shows the resulting
zones after the Split Sibling button is selected. As can be observed, Zone3 is inserted into
Zone2, and the right side of Zone2 is replaced with Zone4.
Note: When a new zone is created to rectify an overlap issue, it will inherit all of the properties
of the zone that it is replacing. In addition, if the zone being created completely encompasses its
siblings there is an option to delete the sibling zone all together.

Figure 67
7.1.3.2 Interacting with Zones

Once a zone has been created you can very easily perform some important operations on the
zone using the Zone menu. As you can see in Figure 67, there are six icons displayed to the right
of the zone name that permit direct manipulation of the zone. The following sections describe
in more detail the different zone operations that are available.
7.1.3.2.1 Dynamically Logging a Zone

To dynamically log a particular zone, click the mouse on its (start logging) icon. This will
immediately commence data logging of the selected zone. If global logging is currently active, it
will terminate when zone logging commences.
Note: As mentioned earlier in the global logging section, zone and global logging cannot happen
concurrently and so starting zone logging with disable global logging.
Note: If the system is stopped when the start logging zone icon is clicked, the zone will
commence logging as soon as the system is started. In this way, more than one zone can start
logging at the same time.
To terminate a zone logging operation, click on the (stop logging) icon.
Note: This icon is grayed out when logging is not operational for a particular zone.
When clicked, the selected zone’s logging operation will immediately terminate. To
immediately terminate data logging for ALL Zones, click the Stop Logging Zones button below
the zone name(s) near the bottom of the Zones dialog. This will terminate data logging for ALL
the zones currently being logged.
7.1.3.2.2 Zooming into a Zone
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Clicking on the (zoom zone) icon associated with a zone allows you to zoom directly to the
distance extents of the zone. This is just like a normal zoom as described in section 4.8. To un-‐
zoom back to the previous display, click on the Sound Field Unzoom icon.
7.1.3.2.3 Editing a Zone’s start and end distance

To edit a zone’s start and end distance click on the (zone resize) icon. This displays the start
and end drag handles showing the zone’s current extents, which can thereafter be graphically or
manually edited (using the same procedure as creating the zone). Once edited, click the Submit
button to register the change. Figure 68 shows the interface to edit the start and/or end
distance of an existing zone.

Figure 68
7.1.3.2.4 Editing Zone Properties

In addition to simply being a nice way to display a particular section of the fibre sensor on the
Sound Field, zones can have a number of their processing properties customized. By default,
when a zone is first created, it inherits the global fibre properties. There are many situations
where it is desirable to override certain global processing properties for a zone. This is primarily
driven by variations in the fibre sensor’s coupling to the physical disturbance. In addition,
individual zones may be tuned to respond better to specific disturbances by uniquely setting the
properties for each zone.
To edit the zone properties, click on the Zone Property icon (immediately to the left of the red X
icon). This brings up the Zone Properties dialog. This dialog contains the Detection Statistic
properties, with the exception of Spatial Averaging and Spatial Decimation, as well as the Alarm
Detection and Alarm Suppression Thresholds. Figures 70-‐72 show the properties that can be
overridden on a zone-‐by-‐zone basis.
The first section contains the basic zone properties, including the zone name and the start and
end distance for the zone. These properties are independent of any individual stream.
Because HWI 4 is a parallel stream system, there can be multiple streams active at once. It is for
this reason that when overriding the remaining properties for a zone, the property changes
must be associated with an individual stream. To associate a Stream with any property changes,
click on the Stream drop down menu, and select the desired Stream before any property
changes are made.
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Note: If there are no streams associated with the zone’s channel (No Alarms selected for the
current optical channel in the Alarm Report tab in the Optical Channel Properties dialog), than
zone properties cannot be overridden, and the resulting properties dialog is shown in Figure 66.

Figure 69
As a convenience feature, properties associated with an inactive stream can also be overridden
(edited), but the overridden properties will not take affect until the stream is made active by
selecting its associated Alarm Report in the Optical Channel Properties dialog.
Once the stream is selected, the individual properties can be overridden. To override an
individual property, ensure that the Default check mark has been unchecked which should
enable the associated field and make it editable. The property edits can be registered in a
conventional fashion by making the change and clicking on the Apply or Save buttons. The
system will stop, and then restart with the new properties. In addition, certain properties can
be dynamically adjusted, just as they are in the global property dialogs.
Zone properties can be uniquely overridden for more than one stream. A common use of this
feature is to set a unique Alarm Detection Threshold for different streams. To do this, first select
the first stream, then enter the desired override value and click Apply.
Note: Other properties can be optionally overridden for the currently selected stream at the
same time.
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Figure 70

Figure 71
70

Figure 72
Repeat this process for each stream that requires an override for the Alarm Detection Threshold.
This process can be quite lengthy if there are a number of zones and a number of streams to be
overridden.
Refer to section 7.3.1 for a more in-‐depth discussion of how to setup the Detection Statistic
properties in the Zone Properties dialog. Refer to section 7.2.2.3 for a more in-‐depth discussion
on how to setup the Alarm Detection and Suppression Thresholds.
7.1.3.2.5 Delete a Zone

To delete a zone, click on the red X to the right of the zone’s name in the zone list dialog. A
warning message will be displayed confirming the deletion of the Zone. Click the OK button to
delete the zone, or click on the Cancel button to cancel the deletion operation. You can also
delete zone when viewing that zones properties and clicking on the red X at the bottom of the
zone properties dialog.
7.2 Disturbance Detection and Alarm Setup

So far, we have only discussed global properties that are not associated with disturbance
detection and alarming. They simply prepare the data for disturbance detection. This section
will discuss in some detail the methodology used to tune the Helios system to detect and alarm
on specific disturbance types. Section 4.12 introduced the four main components of the
Disturbance Alarming module. Figure 73 shows the basic high-‐level processing flow to detect
and alarm on valid disturbances.
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Step 0
Step 3
Step 1
Step 4
Step 2

Figure 73
Step 0 takes the raw analog signal and converts it into a raw fibre shot, which is the starting
point for all subsequent alarm detection.
Step 1 creates and/or edits a Detection statistic template that will optimize the system response
maximizing the SNR of a desired disturbance. This is done in the Detection statistic module.
Step 2 finds an optimal amplitude threshold to convert all energy in the Event detection value
within an amplitude range to a raw alarm indicator. These Boolean values are called Indicators
because they indicate the possible presence of a valid alarm. This is done in the Stream module.
Use the No Cleaning Indicators factory template as the input Indicators template to determine
the initial threshold value.
Step 3 takes the raw indicators, and attempts to remove as many false positives and false
negatives as possible. This is done in the Indicator Cleaning module. The output from this
module is a stream of cleaned indicators.
Step 4 then takes these cleaned indicators, optionally along with cleaned indicators from other
streams, and subjects them to a number of temporal and spatial filters to decide if they are truly
valid alarms that warrant notification. This is done in the Alarm Reporting module.
Each step of the process requires careful thought, and rigorous analysis of what constitutes a
valid alarm. For simultaneous alarming on multiple alarms types, even more care must be taken
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to make sure that alarms are adequately distinct to prevent the possibility of assigning the
incorrect alarm to the disturbance.
Figure 73 depicts the process flow for a single stream resulting in a single Alarm Report. HWI 4
allows for simultaneous generation of multiple Alarm Reports. To accomplish this, multiple
Alarm Reports must be defined, therefore requiring multiple Streams to be defined, and
potentially requiring multiple Detection statistic templates and Indicator masks to be defined.
The dialogs for each of the four main alarm components all have a consistent way of defining
multiple templates. Each dialog is divided up in to two sections, the property section on the
right, and the template section on the left as can be seen in Figure 74.
Factory
Templates
User
T
Templates
Property Form

Figure 74
Each property dialog allows for the creation, editing and deletion of their respective templates.
There are two types of templates available in HWI, the first is a Factory template and the second
is a User template. Factory templates can only be created, edited and deleted by a Factory user.
Factory templates can be used as the starting point for new User templates. To create a new
User template from a Factory template, select the desired Factory template in template section,
and then click the Save as… button. A popup dialog appears prompting for the name of the new
User template as shown in Figure 75. Enter a new name and click the OK button. This will create
a new User template with the entered name, and give it all the properties of the input Factory
template.
73

Figure 75
Once the new User template has been created, its properties can be edited and saved in the
usual fashion by selecting either the Apply or the Save button. A User template can be used as
the starting point for another User template in exactly the same way as a Factory template can
by selecting the Save as… button.
As an alternative to starting with an existing template to create a new User template, a new
User template may be created from scratch by clicking on the icon. All the property fields are
cleared, and require new values before saving. If any of the mandatory properties are missing
when the new User template is saved, a warning dialog appears indicating which mandatory
properties need to be filled in, as well as highlighting the respective property text fields in
yellow. This is shown in Figure 76.

Figure 76
User templates can be deleted when they are no longer required. Click on the desired template
name, and then click on the icon. A dialog appears prompting for delete confirmation. Click
the OK button to delete the selected template or click the Cancel button to cancel the delete
operation.
These instructions are identical for all four alarming component dialogs.
7.2.1 The Detection Statistic Module

As can be seen from Figure 73, the Detection Statistic Module is the first module in the detection
and alarming processing flow. This module is responsible for pre-‐processing the raw power
spectra data in an attempt to maximize the SNR for a particular type, or class, of disturbance.
The objective is to isolate the energy coming from one disturbance type (the one that the
system is trying to detect) from all the other energy exciting the fibre sensor.
The Detection Statistic Module applies sophisticated signal processing techniques to the
instantaneous power spectra in order to compute an optimal Detection Statistic. The Detection
Statistic Module separates disturbance energy into sub-‐classes using five main criteria;
• Analysis band
• Signal intensity relative to the noise floor (strong or weak)
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• Temporal dynamics (persistent or impulsive)
• Spatial extent (localized or non-‐localized)
• Spectral shape (low frequency modeled, low frequency un-‐modeled or non-‐low
frequency)

Figure 77 shows the upper portion of the Detection Statistic dialog.
This module consumes the most compute resources of all the modules. For this reason, the
number of simultaneous Active Detection Statistic templates should be kept to a minimum.
Typically, a persistent stream and an impulsive stream are computed in parallel. For
disturbances with different spectral content, a new Detection Statistic template could be
created that only changes the Analysis Band. As this process is at the tail end of the Processing
flow, it will not add very much compute load to the system. The following sections will discuss
in more detail each of the processing modules that can be applied to the incoming power
spectra.

Figure 77
7.2.1.1 Detection Statistic Section

Figure 77 shows the Detection Statistic and Power Spectrum Averaging Sections. These
properties are the most commonly used processing properties (along with the PSD Half-‐life).
These properties have a significant affect on the system response and are the first properties to
tune with a new system deployment. The Analysis band low cut and high cut frequencies are
used to restrict the analysis to the frequency range containing the fibre disturbance. By
carefully selecting the analysis band, one can significantly increase the SNR of the system
response, and improve the ability to alarm on the desired disturbance. The Detection statistic
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half-‐life is used to govern the time dynamics of the system response, and works in conjunction
with the PSD Half-‐life described below.
7.2.1.1.1 Analysis band low cut

This property should be set to the low end of the frequency range of the interesting signal from
the disturbance we are trying to detect. It is set in conjunction with the Analysis band high cut
described below. Since the majority of the environmental noise and nuisance energy contains
lower frequencies, it is a good idea to keep the Analysis band low cut as high as possible, while
still being able to detect the disturbance of interest.
7.2.1.1.2 Analysis band high cut

This property should be set to the high end of the frequency range, which is used to isolate the
interesting signal in the disturbance we are trying to detect. In may cases, this frequency range
can be quite narrow, and by reducing the width of the analysis band, we can significantly
increase the SNR of the output signal. The objective is to set the Analysis band high cut just high
enough to include the high end of the disturbance of interest, but not any higher, as increasing
this frequency will reduce the overall SNR.
The analysis band can also be adjusted dynamically, which allows for an instantaneous response
to changes in the analysis band low cut and high cut frequencies. Refer to section 7.2.1.1.4
below for a more in-‐depth discussion on dynamic property editing.
Note: Lowering the analysis band high cut frequency can assist in reducing compute load due to
the frequency truncation feature embedded in the processing module.
7.2.1.1.3 Detection statistic half life

This property is designed to tighten up (de-‐smear) the time resolution that the PSD half-‐life
tends to remove (smear) when attempting to pull weak signals up above the noise floor.
The PSD half-‐life (described below in the Spectral Processing Properties section) is used to
temporally average the power spectra, thereby reducing the level of the noise floor. However,
in doing this, there can be a significant amount of time resolution that is lost with this temporal
smearing. The Detection statistic half-‐life is typically set to a lower value than the PSD to
sharpen up (de-‐smear) the time resolution of the detection statistic output. The idea behind
using the PSD Half-‐life is that the noise is random, and will destructively interfere over time,
whereas the signal is more coherent and will constructively interfere over time.
Although the Detection statistic Kalman filter (A Kalman Filter is a low-‐pass filter designed to
average out rapidly varying random noise.) is typically used to sharpen up the time dynamics
after a PSD Kalman filter has been applied, it can also be used to increase temporal smearing in
the sound field when no PSD Kalman filter has been applied. Let’s say that some temporal
smearing is required in a stream to improve indicator cleanup. Creating a new stream for a new
PSD HL value would require almost the entire stream to be replicated, as the PSD Kalman filter
occurs very early in the processing flow. An alternative would be to adjust the Detection
statistic HL to produce some temporal smearing, as it is located very near the end of the
processing flow, and therefore would require only a couple of steps of the processing flow to be
replicated. It is this type of approach that can save a significant amount of compute load when
trying to setup a system with a number of streams.
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7.2.1.1.4 Dynamic Property Editing
Properties are normally edited by entering in the new property value, and then selecting either
the Submit button to register the change and remove the property dialog, or by selecting the
Apply button to register the change and keep the property dialog visible. After the submission,
HWI temporarily stops operation, reads in the new property values, and restarts operation. This
process can take a couple of seconds to complete, and is not conducive to dynamically editing
properties. An alternative way to edit properties is to use the dynamic property editing method.
Any property that has the icon is eligible to use the dynamic property editing method. To
initiate dynamic property editing, click on the icon. The main properties dialog will be
temporarily removed from the screen, and a dynamic property-‐editing dialog will be displayed.
This appearance of this dialog will be slightly different depending on the property or properties
being edited. Figure 78 shows the dynamic property-‐editing dialog for the Detection Statistic
Half-‐life.

Figure 78
The title of the dialog displays the property being dynamically edited. The Value field will show
the current value of the property being edited. The property can be dynamically edited by
either typing in a new value and selecting Enter, or by dragging the slider bar to a new position.
In both cases, the new property value is immediately submitted and the system output reflects
the property change immediately without having to temporarily stop and restart HWI. Dragging
the slider value to the right will increase the property value, and dragging the slider to the left
will decrease the property value. The current range of the slider is shown below the slider with
the minimum value on the left hand side, and the maximum value on the right hand side. To
change the coarseness of the slider, either click the up or down coarseness arrows or type in a
new coarseness value. Decreasing the sliders coarseness will increase the sensitivity of the slider
and the difference between the minimum and maximum values will decrease allowing for more
fine tuning of the property value. Once the property has been adjusted to the desired value,
click the Submit button to save the change and return to the main properties dialog. To cancel
out of the dynamic property editing operation and discard any temporary property edits click
the Cancel button. To restore the dynamic property-‐editing dialog to the original value, click the
Reset button. This allows the current property to be reset to the original value without having
to remove the dialog.
For some properties, like the Analysis Band low and high values, they can be dynamically edited
together. The dynamic properties editing dialog for the Analysis Band properties includes a
slider for each property, and an additional slider to move the centre point of the current band as
shown in Figure 79. The top slider adjusts the Analysis low value. The middle slider adjusts the
Analysis High value. Finally, the bottom slider adjusts the centre of the current band. When the
bottom slider is adjusted, the top and middle sliders move to the current endpoints of the
current Analysis Band. The coarseness value affects all three sliders in this dialog.
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Figure 79
For some properties, a slider is not appropriate for editing. On/Off properties, like Enable
Spatial Averaging use a simple check box as shown in Figure 80.

Figure 80
Finally, some properties like the WCS Width require discrete values, and use a simple drop down
list as shown in Figure 81.

Figure 81
7.2.1.2 Power Spectrum Averaging Section

This section has been designed to average the instantaneous power spectra in both time and
distance. This module employs a Kalman filter to average power spectra in time to assist in
detecting the response from subtle low-‐intensity disturbances. In addition to the temporal
averaging, the module employs a spatial correlation routine to average the power spectra in
distance along the length of the fibre sensor to assist in averaging out sensitivity variations
inherent in the design of Helios system. Both of these are described in more detail below.
7.2.1.2.1 PSD (Power Spectral Density) half life

The PSD half-‐life is used to adjust the amount of temporal smearing (averaging) that is applied
to the power spectra prior to further processing. As mentioned above, when the signal of
interest is weak in comparison to the noise floor, the best way to allow the signal to raise above
the noise floor is to use a significant amount of temporal smearing. This temporal smearing is
done using a Kalman filter. The longer the PSD half-‐life, the more smearing is applied. For weak
persistent disturbances, such as leaks, a typical value of the PSD half-‐life could be as large as 10
to 15 seconds. This has the affect of significantly reducing the noise floor, thereby allowing
lower amplitude signals to be seen above the noise floor. For temporally impulsive
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disturbances, a much shorter PSD half-‐life would typically be used, on the order of 0.05 to 0.2
seconds. If the PSD half-‐life is too long, the associated temporal smearing may completely
remove short duration impulsive disturbances. To apply temporal smearing, enter in a non-‐zero
value for the PSD Half-‐life.
As mentioned above, this property is used in conjunction with the Detection statistic half-‐life.
While the PSD half-‐life has the effect of smearing time, the Detection statistic half-‐life attempts
to regain that time resolution by attempting to undo the temporal smearing from the PSD
Kalman filter. By careful use of these two Kalman filters, SNR improvements can be obtained,
without the negative affects of temporal smearing.
Note: Applying too long of a PSD Half-‐life can potentially remove short time duration impulsive
disturbances. It should mainly be used with low-‐amplitude persistent disturbance types such as
low intensity leaks.
7.2.1.2.2 Spatial Averaging (WCS – Weighted Component Synthesis)

As mentioned above, this module has the affect of averaging signals in space. There can be
noticeable bin-‐to-‐bin amplitude variations along the fibre. This is due to an inherent sensitivity
issue in the Helios controller. These bin-‐to-‐bin sensitivity variations can have an adverse affect
on producing an optimal Detection Statistic. Spatial Averaging can remove these bin-‐to-‐bin
sensitivity variations, and produce a Detection Statistic with a much higher SNR. Spatial
Averaging works by looking at the signal response of neighboring bins, and then computing an
optimal scale factor for the centre bin. The width of the spatial filter is determined by the WCS
Width, and is selected from the WCS width drop down menu. The available filter widths are all
odd value, and represent the total width of the filter. The corresponding width is shown before
the drop down menu for reference. Making the WCS width larger will produce more spatial
averaging, whereas making the WCS width smaller will produce less spatial averaging. Setting
the WCS width too large can potentially smear neighboring disturbances together. In addition,
the location accuracy of a disturbance tends to decrease as the WCS width is increased.
To enable Spatial Averaging, ensure that the Enable spatial averaging toggle has been checked.
Then select the desired WCS width. Both the toggle and the WCS width can be adjusted
dynamically.
To better demonstrate how Spatial Averaging affects the fibre response, take a look at the
following example. This example uses a fibre stretcher to excite a section of fibre that is
approximately 12 metres in length. A fibre stretcher is a device that excites approximately 12
metres of fibre with a user-‐input signal. One of the key characteristics of the fibre stretcher is
that it uniformly applies the disturbance across the entire 12 metres of fibre. As can be seen in
Figure 82, the system response is not at all uniform over the interval being excited by the fibre
stretcher. This clearly shows the bin-‐to-‐bin sensitivity issue that was discussed above. Figure 83
shows the exact same signal, but with Spatial averaging enabled using a WCS width of 3 bins
(approximately 2 metres). The low sensitivity sections of the fibre have been removed, and the
overall system response is much more uniform across the extent of the fibre stretcher.
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Figure 82

Figure 83
As mentioned above, notice that the disturbance in Figure 82 has been smeared out beyond the
extent of the fibre stretcher.
7.2.1.2.3 Spatial Decimation factor

Once a Spatial filter has been applied to the data, it becomes possible to spatially decimate the
data in order to reduce the system compute load. As discussed above, the WCS module looks at
the response of (N/2)-‐1 bins on either side of the current location, where N is the WCS width,
and uses this information to optimally adjust the scale factor for the middle of the N bins.
Therefore, the middle bin already contains information from the N-‐1 neighboring bins.
Assuming the disturbance affects at least N bins, the fibre can have spatial decimation applied
without significantly degrading the system response to the disturbance.
In other words, if an N bin WCS filter is applied, then there can be up to an N bin spatial
decimation applied as well. When performing an N bin spatial decimation, the system only
keeps every Nth bin, and discards the remaining bins. It increases the effective bin width by N
times, but also reduces the amount of data to be processed by N times. This method can be
used to reduce the compute load to a level that will allow the system to process a long fibre
sensor with multiple processing streams. Care should be taken when applying Spatial
decimation to ensure that narrow disturbances are still detectable, and that closely spaced
disturbances can be spatially resolved and still be individually detected.
Spatial Decimation is a very good way to reduce the compute load of the system, particularly
when multiple streams are being computed in parallel. It can be used along with Frame
Stacking and higher FFT Sizes to reduce the overall compute load on the system.
7.2.1.3 Signal Separation Section

Signal Separation is used to optionally separate out the input signal into four separate
components. These components are:
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• Strong impulsive signals
• Strong persistent signals
• Weak signals
• Noise
These four components are created by using the following three routines:
• Strong/Weak signal separation

• Temporal decomposition
• Weak/Noise separation

Figure 84 shows the Signal Separation section of the Spectral Processing properties.

Figure 84
The following paragraphs describe these properties for these three routines in more detail.
7.2.1.3.1 Strong/Weak Signal Separation

This module is used when there are reasonably strong signals relative to the background noise.
In the case of footsteps, digging or vehicle movement, this is the most common approach to
take. Strong amplitude implies that the signal is sufficiently high relative to the noise floor to
not require significant temporal averaging to detect it.
7.2.1.3.1.1 Enable Strong/Weak Separation
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Ensure that this check box is selected in order to enable the Strong/Weak Separation module.
When this module is selected, the Strong/weak separation factor text field is enabled, as well as
the check boxes to include the strong impulsive spectrum and/or the noise floor spectrum.
7.2.1.3.1.2 Strong/Weak Separation Factor

This is a positive number greater than or equal to zero. The smaller this value is, the more noise
energy will make it into the Strong signal component. If you enable Strong/Weak separation,
and set the separation factor to 0, you will see the noise level actually grow slightly. This is due
to the way the detection statistic is computed. Moving from 0 to 1 will slightly reduce the
noise level. As this value gets larger, there will be more noise removed from the strong signal. A
typical value is around 2 to 5.
As this value gets larger, we sometimes see some blips that manage to make it into the strong
signal spectrum. The noise floor continues to become more sparse, and the amplitude of the
noise tends to get higher as well.
Note: In order to separate out the noise from the strong signal, ensure that you select the
Include Strong Impulsive spectrum and that you de-‐select the Include Noise Floor spectrum. If all
the available spectra are selected (included), then there will be no separation.
7.2.1.3.2 Weak /Noise Separation

This routine is used when the signal that we are trying to detect is quite weak relative to the
noise floor. This method uses the same separation algorithm as the Strong/Weak separation,
but does it after time averaging (using a Kalman Filter) in order to better isolate the persistent
weak signals from the pseudo random noise floor. This is typically used to improve delectability
of weak persistent signals such as low energy leaks.
The difference is that the Weak – Noise separation algorithm works on the time averaged noise
floor, whereas the Strong – Weak separation works on the non-‐time averaged noise floor. This
is used in situations where the non-‐time averaged signal is so weak that it is buried in the noise
floor. Time averaging the noise floor can significantly reduce its level, allowing even weak
signals to rise above the noise floor and become detectable.
7.2.1.3.2.1 Enable Weak/Noise Separation

Ensure that this check box is selected in order to enable the Weak -‐ Noise Separation module.
When this module is selected, the Weak -‐ Noise separation factor text field is enabled, as well as
the check boxes to include the weak signal spectrum and/or the noise floor spectrum.
7.2.1.3.2.2 Weak/Noise Separation Factor

This is a positive number greater than or equal to zero. The smaller this value is, the more noise
energy will make it into the weak signal. Setting it to zero will put all the noise energy into the
weak signal component of the power spectrum. Moving from 0 to 1 will slightly reduce the
noise level. As this value gets larger, there will be more noise removed from the weak signal. A
typical value is around 2 to 5.
7.2.1.3.3 Temporal decomposition

This routine is designed to split out signals that exhibit impulsive temporal characteristics from
those that exhibit more temporally persistent characteristics. Footsteps would be an example
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of an impulsive signal, whereas a leak, or even a vehicle driving along the fibre would be an
example of a more persistent signal. There are three properties that are used to tune the
impulsive and persistent signal separation. The first two are typically set to the same value.
As a result of the methods used in our real-‐time temporal decomposition algorithms, there will
always be a little shadow from the impulsive disturbances that will leak into the persistent signal
spectrum.
Note: The smaller the Baseline Doubling Period and the Baseline Recovery Period, the more of
the impulsive energy will leak into the persistent signal spectrum.
7.2.1.3.3.1 Enable temporal decomposition

Ensure that this check box is selected in order to enable the temporal decomposition module.
When this module is selected, the three module property text fields are also enabled. In
addition, the option to include either the strong persistent or strong impulsive is now available.
Note: In order to successfully separate out impulsive from persistent signal, ensure that only one
of the above spectra check boxes is selected.
7.2.1.3.3.2 Baseline Doubling Period & Baseline Recovery Period

These properties are used to define the characteristic time scale of a disturbance you consider
to be a persistent disturbance. For typical walking, each foot plant typically lasts about 0.5
seconds. The foot plants are typically separated by up to a second. To ensure foot plants are
restricted to the impulsive spectrum, keep the Baseline Doubling and Baseline Recovery period
longer than the duration of the impulsive event disturbance (0.5 seconds in our example). Any
event disturbances that have durations less than this value will be put into the persistent
spectrum. The Baseline periods control the responsiveness of a tracking function that attempts
to follow the change of energy with time. The values actually relate to how quickly the tracking
function can react to changes in the energy response. The Baseline periods should be set to
ensure that the tracking function stays below the impulsive component, but still manages to
track the persistent component fairly well.
7.2.1.3.3.3 Preconditioning Half Life

As its name implies, this property governs the length of a temporal smoothing filter used to
minimize the effect of temporal amplitude variations strictly due to variations in sensitivity of
our detector. This value should be significantly less than the time period between two
successive impulsive disturbances, but long enough to take out the amplitude variations in the
persistent signals. A value of 0.02 to 0.1 seconds typically works well to ensure that persistent
signals don’t get put into the impulsive component.
7.2.1.4 Spatial Processing Section

Figure 85 shows the Spatial Processing section of the Detection Statistic dialog. This section
contains two components. The first has been designed to perform a local spatial interpolation
to reduce the bin-‐to-‐bin variations in sensitivity. The second component separates the signal
energy of a local (spatially local) disturbance from the energy of a more global disturbance. The
objective of this module is to differentiate disturbances that are localized to a short length of
fibre (local), from disturbances that affect much longer sections of the fibre sensor (non-‐local).
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Figure 85
7.2.1.4.1 Spatial Amplitude Adjustment

The Spatial Amplitude Adjustment module is useful to fill in spatial gaps in our Detection
Statistic. Because of non-‐linearities in our optics module, a signal that would normally be
continuous over a small number of adjacent fibre locations will contain gaps. This module
attempts to interpolate a continuous response over the width of the event disturbance to
remove these gaps.
Note: This module preceded the newer WCS module, and utilizes a much more simplistic
approach to managing the bin-‐to-‐bin sensitivity variations. WCS should always be used.
7.2.1.4.1.1 Enable Spatial Amplitude Adjustment

Ensure that this check box is selected in order to enable the Spatial Amplitude Adjustment
module. When this module is selected, the Structure Element Width text box is enabled.
7.2.1.4.1.2 Structure Element Width

This is the width of a sliding window that attempts to smooth out spatial amplitude variations.
Setting this value to zero applies no spatial smoothing. Increasing this value will increase the
amount of spatial smoothing. A good rule of thumb is to set this width to a value that is less
than or equal to the current pulse width. The pulse width is defined in terms of nanoseconds. A
rough conversion from nanoseconds to metres is 10 to 1. A 10 nanosecond pulse width will
have a width of approximately 1 metre. Typical values for the Structure Element Width are
between 2.5 and 7.5 metres.
Making this value too large will produce poor results. You will often see large triangles
appearing in the event detection value, which are artifacts of too much spatial smoothing.
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The signal response tends to have a much smoother more solid shape without as many dropouts
in the middle of the signal disturbance when observed in the Sound Field.
7.2.1.4.2 Spatial Decomposition

The Spatial Decomposition module is designed to distinguish between and ultimately separate
spatially local event disturbances from non-‐spatially local event disturbances.
7.2.1.4.2.1 Enable Spatial Decomposition

Ensure that this check box is selected in order to enable the Spatial Decomposition module.
When this module is selected, the Spatial cutoff size text field is enabled. In addition, the option
to exclude either the local spectrum or non-‐local spectrum is now available.
Note: In order to successfully separate out local from non-‐local signal, ensure that only one of
the above spectra is selected.
7.2.1.4.2.2 Spatial cutoff size

This property sets the boundary between disturbances that are deemed to be local vs. those
that are deemed to be non-‐local. Setting this value to zero will push the entire signal into the
non-‐local component. Increasing this value will shift more signal from the non-‐local component
into the local component.
A good way to look at this is to look at a disturbance as a small spatial hill. Where the hill
narrows to the spatial cutoff size, we remove the hilltop, and put that into the local component.
The remaining portion of the hill (with a plateau on top now) is put into the non-‐local
component of our signal energy.
7.2.1.5 Spectral Shape Analysis Section

Figure 85 (above) also shows the Spectral Shape Analysis section of the Detection Statistic
dialog. This module attempts to separate the signal energy into three different spectral shape
components. These components are the Low Frequency spectrum (modeled), Low Frequency
spectrum (un-‐modeled) and finally, the Non-‐low Frequency spectrum. The objective is to
separate out the large modeled power spectrum triangle, from the little bumps sitting on top of
the triangle. Quite often, narrowband signals that are completely buried in the low frequency
modeled spectrum can be nicely resolved using this module.
7.2.1.5.1 Enable Spectral Shape Analysis

Ensure that this check box is selected in order to enable the Spectral Shape Analysis module.
When this module is selected, the activation threshold text field is enabled. In addition, the
option to exclude the local modeled spectrum, the local non-‐modeled spectrum and/or the non-‐
local spectrum is now available. In order to successfully separate out these three spectra,
ensure that all three of the above spectra are not selected.
7.2.1.5.2 Activation Threshold

The Activation Threshold is a value used to define the spectral data used as input into a curve fit.
This will define a boundary between the expected (modeled) low frequency spectrum, and the
non-‐low frequency spectrum. Typically, for narrow band disturbances, we want to discard the
low frequency modeled spectrum, and keep the other two spectra. A typical value for the
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Activation Threshold is between 2 and 4, and is dependent on the amplitude of the low
frequency modeled spectrum.
7.2.2 Stream Definition Module

The output from the Streams Definition Module forms the input to the Alarm Reporting module.
Streams consist of a Detection Statistic template and an Indicator Mask (or Indicator Template).
In addition, the Detection Threshold used to convert the Detection Statistic into Raw Indicators is
defined in the Streams dialog. This is to allow a single Indicator Mask to be re-‐used with
multiple Detection Thresholds. Prior to defining a stream, there must be an existing detection
statistic template and an existing Indicator Mask. Figure 86 shows the Streams dialog. The
following sections will describe how to select an optimal Detection Threshold to create the raw
indicators, as well as how to select an input Detection Statistic template and an Indicator Mask.
If there is no Indicator Mask, refer to Section 7.2.3 below to learn how to create an Indicator
Mask using the Indicator Cleaning module.

Figure 86
7.2.2.1 Name
Enter the Name to be given to the Stream being created. It should be something that clearly
describes the Stream, and the associated input Detection Statistic template and Indicator
Cleaning mask. If a name is entered that is the same as a previous stream, the name will be
appended with a number to differentiate it from the originally named stream.
7.2.2.2 Detection Statistic template selection

As indicated above, a Detection Statistic template is required as input for the Streams module.
To select the input Detection Statistic template, click the dropdown menu arrow, and select the
desired Detection Statistic template. The list is divided up into factory templates and user
defined templates. To open up the Detection Statistic template, click on the ellipses to the right
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of the dropdown menu. It will default to the currently selected template. The Detection
Statistic properties can be optionally edited as required.
7.2.2.3 Alarm detection threshold

In order to produce an alarm on a specific disturbance, the detection statistic needs to be
converted into an alarm indicator. Any detection statistic values that fall above the Alarm
detection threshold and below (optionally) the Alarm suppression threshold will produce a raw
alarm indicator. (The alarm indicator is a Boolean value with a value of 1 indicating the
presence of an indicator, and a value of 0 indicating the absence of an indicator.)
The objective is to set the Alarm Detection Threshold at a level that will allow the system to
alarm only on valid disturbances, and not alarm on noise, or other ambient disturbances on the
fibre sensor. The Detection Statistic Module (described earlier) is used to pre-‐condition the
Alarm Detection Values to accentuate desired signals while subduing noise and non-‐interesting
disturbances. Thresholding is the first step to producing an alarm. Once the Alarm Indicators
are produced, then they are optionally cleaned up to remove any false positives and false
negatives (These are discussed in subsequent paragraphs).
Note: Failure to set the Alarm Detection Threshold to the correct value will significantly reduce
the accuracy of disturbance alarming, so this is an important step.
A quick way to determine an optimal Alarm Detection Threshold is to use a colour bar with a
colour discontinuity at a specific position in the colour map. A good suggestion is to setup a
colour map going from dark blue to lighter blue on the bottom half, and then set the top half to
go from yellow to red. Using a colour bar like this will make it very easy to tell when an Alarm
Detection Value has crossed the mid-‐way point of the full range. With the system running, and
while observing the background noise level and the disturbance of interest, adjust the Sound
Field display scale so that the amplitude of the interesting disturbances are above the midway
point in the colour bar (i.e. are in the yellow to red colour range). Then, setting an Alarm
Detection Threshold to one half of the Sound Field display scale will ensure that any
disturbances that are displayed as yellow or red will produce an Event Indicator.
Don’t worry too much if the odd noise value crosses into the yellow/red zone, as the indicator
cleaning process will remove random Alarm Indicators that are not part of a valid disturbance.
As the fibre sensor increases in length, the sensitivity of the fibre sensor decreases. Therefore, a
disturbance detected closer to the Helios controller can have a higher amplitude than one
detected further down the fibre sensor. In order to detect disturbances anywhere along the
fibre sensor, the Alarm Detection Threshold needs to be reduced for longer distances. The way
to accomplish this is to create a few zones that cover the further sections of the fibre sensor.
Then, override the Alarm Detection Threshold for each stream in each zone. Refer back to
section 7.2 for a more in-‐depth discussion on how to override zone properties.
7.2.2.4 Enable alarm suppression

Although not as commonly used, an upper threshold can optionally be defined to create a range
of values that will produce Alarm indicators. This is called an Alarm suppression threshold. To
enable this, ensure that Enable alarm suppression toggle is checked.
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7.2.2.5 Alarm suppression threshold
Once Alarm suppression has been enabled, enter in a value for the Alarm suppression threshold.
This value will prevent Alarm detection values above the Alarm suppression threshold from
producing Indicators. This can be used to prevent alarming on extremely high amplitude
disturbances. As previously mentioned, it may be necessary to reduce the Alarm suppression
threshold at greater distances due to the reduction in sensitivity with distance. This can be done
by creating zones at greater distances, and overriding the Alarm suppression threshold in the
same fashion as overriding the Alarm detection threshold.
7.2.2.6 Indicator Mask Selection

To select the Indicator mask to use as input into the stream, click the dropdown menu arrow in
the Streams dialog, and select the desired Indicator mask. The list is divided up into factory
masks and user defined mask. To open up the Indicator mask, click on the ellipses to the right of
the dropdown menu. It will default to the currently selected mask. The Indicator cleaning
properties can be optionally edited as required. This process is described below.
7.2.3 Indicator Cleaning Module

This module is used to create an Indicator cleaning mask. The purpose of this module is to take
raw indicators and attempt to remove false positive and false negative values that are not
associated with the desired disturbance. The module works by first cleaning the raw indicators
in distance, and then cleaning the raw indicators in time. Event sizes refer to distances in metres
and Event durations refer to times in seconds. It is important to remember cleaning order, as it
can explain why certain cleaning behavior is observed. Figure 87 shows the Indicators (Cleaning)
dialog. The following sections will describe how to set the Indicator cleaning properties to
achieve optimally cleaned indicators.

Figure 87
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7.2.3.1 Name
Enter the Name to be given to the Indicator cleaning mask being created. It should be
something that clearly describes the mask. If a name is entered that is the same as a previous
mask, the name will be appended with a number to differentiate it from the originally named
mask.
7.2.3.2 Enable morphological cleaning

In order to enable indicator cleaning and edit any of the properties in the Indicator Cleaning
dialog, ensure that this check box is selected. If it is not selected, none of the properties in this
dialog can be edited and indicator cleaning will not be performed. The supplied factory
Indicator mask, No Morph Clean, does not perform any indicator cleaning at all. Using this mask
creates a stream that simply passes raw alarm indicators into the Alarm Reporting module.
7.2.3.3 Maximum false negative rate

This property is used to assist in removing false negatives due to spatial sensitivity fluctuations
in the system response. As a result of this, some fibre locations that should contain valid signal
may be missing raw indicators. Use of this property can reduce the likelihood that a connected
sequence (run) of alarm indicators will be removed because it fails the Minimum alarm size
filter. Rather than removing all runs of connected alarm indicators that are less than minimum
alarm size, it modifies the logic to now only remove runs of connected alarm indicators that are
less than the product of Maximum false negative rate and Minimum alarm size. Reducing the
value will remove more false negative values, while increasing the value will remove fewer false
negative values. Setting the Maximum false negative rate to 1.0 will not remove any false
negative values.
For example, let’s say the Minimum alarm size is 2 metres, and the Maximum false negative rate
is 0.667. Two metres roughly equates to 3 spatial data samples. If three successive spatial
samples contained indicators, the run would be kept. With the Maximum false negative rate set
to 0.667, if the middle sample of the three did not contain an indicator, the cleaning algorithm
would still pass the three-‐sample run of indicators as there is still two thirds (0.667) of indicators
present.
Note: When using a WCS spatial averaging filter or Spatial Amplitude Adjustment, the number of
false negatives is significantly reduced, therefore reducing the need to use this property.
7.2.3.4 Minimum event size

As mentioned above, the Indicator Cleaning module first works in the spatial dimension. The
indicator cleaning routine first attempts to remove any false positives. A false positive is any
spatial run of connected alarm indicators that is less than the Minimum event size in metres.
When a false positive is found, the alarm indicators associated with it are discarded. If we know
that the disturbance of interest is likely to disturb at least 5 metres of the fibre sensor, then we
would likely set the Minimum alarm size to be 5 metres, knowing that any disturbance of less
than 5 metres would not be from the disturbance of interest. Setting the Minimum alarm size
too large can have the adverse affect of actually removing valid indicators that just didn’t meet
the Minimum event size criteria.
7.2.3.5 Minimum lull size

After the false positives have been removed, the process then attempts to remove any false
negatives. A false negative is any gap in an indicator run that is less than the Minimum lull size
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in metres. When a false negative is found, the gap is filled in with alarm indicators. The
cleaning routine assumes that if the occasional fibre location is missing an indicator, it is
because of the spatial sensitivity fluctuations, and simply fills it in.
7.2.3.6 Maximum event size

This property is used to reject disturbances that are wider than the Maximum alarm size in
meters. This check occurs after false positives and false negatives have been removed. This
property was introduced as an easy way to reject disturbances that are much wider than the
disturbances of interest.
Note: If a smaller interesting disturbance occurs over the same location range as a larger non-‐
interesting disturbance, using the Maximum event size property will remove the alarm indicators
for both disturbances. Use with caution as this can sometimes remove the disturbances you are
trying to alarm on.
This is a legacy property that was introduced before the more recent Alarm Size filter (described
below in Section 7.3.5.4.1), and is not typically used any more. It is typically safer to reject wide
disturbances using the Alarm Size filter.
7.2.3.7 Minimum event duration

Once the spatial indicator cleaning is complete for a given time, the process then looks to
perform the same two operations on neighboring time samples for a given position on the fibre.
The temporal indicator cleaning first attempts to remove any false positives in the temporal
dimension. Similar to above, a temporal false positive is any temporal run of connected alarm
indicators that is less than the Minimum event duration in seconds.
7.2.3.8 Minimum lull duration

After all temporal false positives have been removed, the process then attempts to remove any
temporal false negatives. Similar to above, a temporal false positive is any gap that is less than
the Minimum lull duration in seconds.
Note: When setting the temporal indicator cleaning properties, it can be advantageous to
display every detection statistic by setting the Sound Field update rate equal to the FFT update
rate. This may not be possible in Live Fibre mode, due to the length of the fibre being monitored.
By logging a representative time interval of raw data, and replaying it using the Playback
module, one can set the Sound Field update rate to the FFT update rate (make sure the Playback
speed is set to a small number such as 0.1). This allows all the indicators to be displayed in the
Sound Field, and makes optimizing the indicator cleaning properties much easier. Another trick
in obtaining faster Sound Field update rates is to reduce the size of the display browser window.
A full screen HWI browser window will update much more slowly than a smaller window,
perhaps taking up one quarter of the display. This is because the limiting factor is the actual
drawing, and the smaller the drawing window, the faster the display will update.
7.2.4 Alarm Reporting Module

The Alarm Reporting Module takes the cleaned alarm indicators from one or more Streams, and
subjects them to a number of decision criteria in order to determine if a valid alarm should be
generated. The decision logic occurs in stages. To produce an alarm, the cleaned indicators
must first satisfy the basic Tracking criteria. Then they must meet the criteria of all enabled
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Alarm filters. Finally, before an alarm is generated, it must meet the criteria of all enabled High-‐
level rules that have been defined.
Rather than use the cleaned indicators from a single Stream, the cleaned indicators from a
number of Streams may be combined together using Boolean logic prior to being sent to the
Alarm Reporting decision logic. If more than one stream of indicators is required, they are
combined using a Boolean AND operation. If more than one stream of indicators is disallowed
(not required), they are first combined using a Boolean AND operation, and then removed from
the required indicator streams. The idea is that all of the required streams must be present, and
none of the Disallowed streams can be present. This is a very powerful (and quite complex)
feature of the Alarm Reporting module. An example of this Boolean logic will be given in the
sections that describe Required streams and Disallowed streams.
The following sections will describe how to set the Alarm Reporting properties to allow the
system to properly alarm on desired disturbances. Figure 88 shows the basic Stream selection
and Tracking properties of the Alarm Reporting module.

Figure 88
7.2.4.1 Name
Enter the Name to be given to the Alarm Report being created. It should be something that
clearly describes the Alarm Report. If a name is entered that is the same as a previous report,
the name will be appended with a number to differentiate it from the originally named report.
7.2.4.2 Alarm type

HWI comes from the factory with a number of pre-‐defined Alarm Report types. Select the
desired alarm type from the drop down menu. Each alarm type has an icon associated with it.
The following alarm types and their associated icons are shown below.
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Unknown
Broken Rail
Cable Handling
Digging
Fence Climbing
Fence Cutting
Fence Disturbance
Flat Wheel
Gas Leak
Generic
Heavy Equipment
Leak
Lid Lift
Mechanized Digging
Rock Fall
Theft
Train
Vehicle
Walking

Every Alarm Report requires an associated Alarm type. Select the desired Alarm type from the
drop down menu. When an alarm is generated, it will be one of these icons that will be
displayed on the Sound Field.
7.2.4.3 Include time series?

For stationary Alarms, the time series associated with the Alarm Report can be optionally
included with the Alarm Report. This time series is filtered to the same frequencies as the
current analysis band. When the Alarm Report is viewed on a Panoptes server, the time series
can be optionally displayed and/or listened to. This is a very handy feature to actually view
and/or listen to the underlying data that actually produced the Alarm Report.
Note: Alarm time histories can only be viewed from a Panoptes server. The current version of
HWI has no facility to view and/or listen to the time histories associated with Alarm Reports.
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7.2.4.4 Required stream
Each Alarm Report requires at least one required stream. To add a required stream, click on the
icon. Then select the desired stream from the required stream drop down menu. Once one
or more required streams exist, a stream can be removed by clicking on the icon. Repeat the
process of adding streams until all the desired streams have been added. When more than one
required stream exists, the indicators of each stream will be combined using a Boolean AND
operation prior to being input into the Alarm Report. Halos (described below) can be used to
adjust the effective width of each stream prior to being combined with the Boolean AND
operation.
7.2.4.5 Relative Halo (%)

When more than one stream is being input into an Alarm Report, the Relative Halo can be used
to increase the indicator width by a certain percentage. A positive value will increase the
indicator width by the entered percentage. Setting the value to zero will not affect the original
width.
7.2.4.6 Absolute Halo (m)

The Absolute Halo operates in a very similar fashion to the Relative Halo, except that instead of
increasing the indicator width by a percentage of its original width, it simply increases the
original width by the entered amount. A positive value will increase the indicator width by the
entered number of metres. Setting the value to zero will not affect the original width.
Note: If both a Relative Halo and an Absolute Halo are entered, the larger of the two will dictate
how much the indicator width will be increased.
7.2.4.7 Disallowed stream

There are some situations that require the absence of an indicator stream before an Alarm
Report should be generated. For these situations, a Disallowed stream needs to be defined. To
add a disallowed stream, click on the icon. Then select the desired stream from the
disallowed stream drop down menu. Once one or more disallowed streams exist, a stream can
be removed by clicking on the icon. Repeat the process of adding streams until all the
disallowed streams have been added. Disallowed streams are affected by Halos in exactly the
same way as required streams are.
The following example will help illustrate how streams and halos can be used to assist in
alarming on a desired disturbance while not alarming on nuisance alarms. In this example, the
objective was to alarm on manual digging and reject the disturbance energy of a nearby train.
Two streams were created, a strong impulsive stream for the digging, and a stream to capture
the train disturbance. Unfortunately, due to the nature of the train disturbance, its energy was
being included in the digging stream, which was creating false alarms. The customer did not
expect the system to alarm on digging in the presence of a train, so the idea was to use the
presence of a train to mask out the digging stream. The challenge was to create a stream that
would detect digging and the train, but more importantly, create a stream that would detect the
train, but would not include any of the digging disturbance energy.
By including the digging stream as a required stream, and by including the train stream as a
disallowed stream, the system was able to reject most of the false alarms from the train. When
the train passed, it generated alarm indicators in the digging stream as well as the train stream,
and when the train stream was removed from the digging stream, it removed the majority of
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the train-‐induced indicators. If there was a valid digging disturbance, then when the train
stream was removed from the digging stream, because it had no indicators from the digging
disturbance, it had no adverse affect. There was still some energy at the edges of the train
disturbance that was creeping into digging stream, and continuing to generate a few false
alarms. The solution to this was to extend the width of the train stream so that it would mask
out these remaining edges. The relative halo was set to 50%, which completely removed the
remaining false alarms from the passing train. So, by using both a required stream and a
disallowed stream, along with a non-‐zero halo to extend the width of the disallowed stream
indicators, we were able to meet the alarming requirements stipulated by the client.
7.2.4.8 Tracking Properties

The Tracking properties are used to track disturbances and provide information on the
disturbance width, speed and acceleration. Figure 88 (above) shows the Tracking properties.
The following sections will describe the Tracking properties in more detail.
7.2.4.8.1 History length

History length is the amount of time that is used to decide if the alarm indicators in an alarm
track have met the initial Tracking criteria to generate a disturbance alarm. The History length is
used in conjunction with the Reporting threshold (described below) to make this decision.
Note: For situations where the system needs to alarm very quickly on short duration
disturbances, it is advisable to set the history length to a short time duration and/or set the
reporting threshold to a small value, as both of these properties, if set too large, can significantly
delay the actual alarm report (which is the first time an alarm icon is displayed on the HWI
display.)
In addition to being used for the Alarming criteria, the History length is the length of time that is
remembered when attempting to predict where an alarm track is likely to be in the future.
7.2.4.8.2 History weight half-life

This property is used to weight recent time samples more heavily when estimating an alarm
track. It is primarily used when tracking disturbances whose motion does not strictly adhere to
either the constant velocity or constant acceleration tracking models, particularly when longer
History lengths are used. To apply uniform weighting of the track estimate, ensure the Uniform
weight check box is checked. Enter the desired History weight half-‐life (in seconds) to force the
most recent time samples to bias the alarm track estimate. For longer history lengths, it is
advisable to set the History weight half-‐life to 25%-‐50% of the history length.
7.2.4.8.3 Tracking model

This property is used to assist HWI in tracking Alarms. Rather than have HWI attempt to track all
Alarms, it will only attempt to track moving Alarms. When it is known in advance that an Alarm
will be moving or stationary, this information should be supplied to HWI. This is done by
selecting the appropriate Tracking model from the drop down menu. Select Stationary for
Alarms that are not moving (digging, leaks and other non-‐moving Alarms), Constant motion for
Alarms that are not expected to have much acceleration (walking is a good example of this) and
Accelerated motion for Alarms that are expected to have significant acceleration in them (a
good example of this would be trains pulling into and out of a station).
7.2.4.8.4 Alarm reporting interval
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Even though we update the alarm track and decide if a disturbance alarm should be generated
at a rate equal to the FFT update rate, we may only want to send out Alarm Reports at a much
slower rate. This is the time interval between alarm reports, in seconds, at which we send out
Alarm Reports to the HWI display (or other 3rd party interfaces). The Alarm Report will be
updating internally at the FFT update rate, but only be sent out at the reporting interval.
7.2.4.9 Alarm Filters

Alarm filters add another level of capability to HWI’s ability to alarm on valid disturbances and
to reject false alarms and nuisance alarms. Any number of the Alarm filters can be enabled for a
specific Alarm Report. An Alarm Report will only be generated if the disturbance passes ALL
enabled Alarm filters. Figure 89 shows the Alarm filter properties. The following sections will
describe these properties in more detail.

Figure 89
7.2.4.9.1 Reporting Threshold

This is a very important property that plays a major role in generation of disturbance alarms. As
mentioned above, it works in conjunction with the History length to determine if the
disturbance meets the Tracking criteria. It will control if and when a disturbance alarm will be
generated. This property is a fraction ranging between 0 and 1. Setting this property to 1.0
requires that every time sample in our history length must have an alarm Indicator before an
Alarm Report is generated. If a single time sample is missing an alarm Indicator, then no Alarm
Report will be generated. If the reporting threshold is set to 0.5, then 50% of the time samples
in the history length will require alarm indicators before an Alarm Report is generated. This is
best illustrated with an example.
Let’s say the history length is set to 5 seconds. An FFT rate set to approximately 20 Hz would
result in about 100 time samples in our history length. If we set our reporting threshold to 0.5,
then as soon as we get 50 alarm Indicators in a history length period, we would generate and
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send out an Alarm Report. By setting this value closer to 1.0, you would restrict disturbance
alarming to only the most solid event tracks. By setting this value closer to 0.0, you would be
generating Alarm Reports for weaker alarm tracks containing more time gaps in the alarm track.
With the introduction of the Alarm Filters (discussed below), it is not as critical to get the correct
combination of History length and Reporting threshold. It is advisable to err on the low side, ie.
set the Reporting threshold too low. This may introduce some false alarms, but the Alarm Filters
will ensure that only disturbances with the correct temporal and spatial characteristics will
actually generate an Alarm Report.
7.2.4.9.2 Size filter

This filter will pass an Alarm Report if its width falls between the minimum and maximum size
(width) in metres. To enable the Size filter, ensure that its check box is checked. Once enabled,
enter in a minimum and maximum size for an Alarm Report. An Alarm Report will only be
generated if the disturbance falls within the specified size range.
7.2.4.9.3 Speed filter

This filter will pass an Alarm Report if its speed falls between the minimum and maximum speed
in the currently selected units. To enable the Speed filter, ensure that its check box is checked.
Once enabled, enter in a minimum and maximum speed for an Alarm Report. An Alarm Report
will only be generated if the disturbance falls within the specified speed range. The minimum
and maximum speeds should both be positive values, as the filter only deals with absolute speed
values.
Note: One way of defining a stationary disturbance is to enter a minimum value that is slightly
below zero, and a maximum value that is slightly above zero. Setting both the minimum and
maximum speed to zero will not generate an Alarm Report if there is any non-‐zero speed, even if
caused by a rounding error.
7.2.4.9.4 Burst count filter

A burst is defined as a group of indicators (in time) surrounded by a group of no indicators
(referred to as lulls). This filter will pass an Alarm Report if the number of bursts within History
length seconds falls between the minimum and maximum number of bursts. To enable the Burst
count filter, ensure that its check box is checked. Once enabled, enter in a minimum and
maximum burst count for an Alarm Report.
As an example, a walking disturbance will create a set of spaced bursts, with each burst
corresponding to an individual foot plant.
Note: When using Burst filters, it is advisable to set the History length to a longer time interval
to allow multiple bursts to occur within the History length.
7.2.4.9.5 Median burst period

The Median burst period is defined to be the median time between the start of successive
bursts. This filter should only be used if the bursts from the disturbance are uniformly spaced in
time, i.e. the bursts have a reasonably constant cadence such as constant walking. This filter will
pass an Alarm Report if the median burst period over a History length time interval falls between
the minimum period and the maximum period, both in seconds. To enable the Median burst
period filter, ensure that its check box is checked. Once enabled, enter in a minimum and
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maximum median burst period (in seconds) for an Alarm Report. An Alarm Report will only be
generated if the disturbance contains an median burst period that is larger than the minimum
median burst period and less than the maximum median burst period.
7.2.4.9.6 Average burst density

The Average burst density is defined to be the average of the ratio of bursts to bursts plus lulls.
This filter will pass an Alarm Report if the average burst density over a History length time
interval falls between the minimum density and the maximum density as a percentage.
As an example, a walking disturbance will produce bursts corresponding to foot plants, and lulls
corresponding to the time between foot plants. Assuming the bursts last on average for 0.5
seconds and the lulls last on average for 1 second, the Average burst density would be 0.5 /
(0.5+1), or 33.3%. To enable the Average burst density filter, ensure that its toggle box is
checked. Once enabled, enter in a minimum and maximum average burst density (in percent)
for an Alarm Report.
7.2.4.9.7 Activity duration

The Activity duration is defined to be the length of time that a disturbance lasts, and can last
longer than a History length period of time. This filter will pass an Alarm Report if the Activity
duration falls between the minimum duration (in seconds) and the maximum duration. To
enable the Activity duration filter, ensure that its toggle box is checked. Once enabled, enter in
a minimum and maximum activity duration (in seconds) for an Alarm Report.
7.2.4.9.8 Median Burst duration

The Median Burst duration is defined to be the median of the durations of all bursts occurring in
a history length period of time. This filter will pass an Alarm Report if the Median Burst duration
falls between the minimum duration (in seconds) and the maximum duration. To enable the
Median Burst duration filter, ensure that its check box is checked. Once enabled, enter in the
desired minimum and maximum median burst durations, in seconds. Using the median rather
than the average allows an anomalously high or low duration to still pass an Alarm Report as
long as the majority of the burst durations fall within the minimum and maximum values.
7.2.4.9.9 Median Lull duration

The Median Lull duration is defined to be the median of the durations of all lulls in a history
length period of time. This filter will pass an Alarm Report if the Lull duration falls between the
minimum duration, in seconds, and the maximum duration. To enable the Median Lull duration
filter, ensure that its toggle box is checked. Once enabled, enter in the desired minimum and
maximum lull duration, in seconds, for an Alarm Report. An Alarm Report will only be generated
if lulls last for a duration that is larger than the minimum lull duration and less than the lull
maximum duration.
7.2.4.10 High-‐level rules

The High-‐level rules section has been added to provide yet another level of Alarm Report
discrimination. After a disturbance event has passed the basic Tracking criteria and relevant
filtering criteria, they can then be optionally passed through a set of High-‐level rules. To display
the High-‐level rules section, click on the High-‐level rules tab. The first time this dialog is
displayed, it will appear empty (as shown in Figure 90 below).
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Figure 90
To add a new rule, click the icon. A new rule template is displayed in the dialog as shown
below in Figure 91. Select the desired Alarm Report for the newly added rule. Once the desired
Alarm Report has been selected, select whether this Alarm Report occurs or does not occur
within the selected distance and/or period of time from the current Alarm Report. Finally, enter
in the distance separation and time interval that the selected Alarm Report must occur (or not
occur) within. Repeat this process to add additional High-‐level rules to assist in generating an
accurate Alarm Report that rejects false alarms and nuisance alarms. To remove a High-‐level
rule, click the beside the rule to be removed.

Figure 91
When all the alarming criteria has been entered in, click the Save or Apply button to register this
newly created Alarm Report.
7.3 Diagnostics
The Diagnostics section contains two items both designed to assist in trying to determine the
cause of system problems. The following sections describe these items in more detail.
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7.3.1 View FDEL Properties
The current HWI system facilitates complete user interaction with the Helios system via a web
interface. Even though HWI has replaced the properties file editing with a convenient web
interface, the underlying application still uses this properties file. There are times when it is
desirable to view the actual contents of the underlying properties text file via the web interface.
To do this, select the View FDEL properties menu item from the Admin menu. This will bring up
a new dialog containing the key-‐value pairs, ordered alphabetically by key, of the system
properties file. Figure 92 shows an example of this window. Use the mouse to scroll the display
down or up to view all of the properties contained in the file. To close this dialog, click the X in
the upper right corner of the window.
The FDEL properties file is updated only upon every successful properties submission using
Apply/Save. Since this dialog reads the properties from the file once and displays it, it is possible
that the properties viewed on the screen could be out of date. Click the Refresh button to
request the latest list of properties from the Helios system.

Figure 92
7.3.2 Download Diagnostic Logs

When reporting a problem with the Helios system, it can be very helpful to the customer
support team if current diagnostic information is sent to them along with the description of the
observed problem as well as any steps that can consistently recreate the problem. To download
the Diagnostic logs, select the Download diagnostic logs menu item from the Admin menu. This
will download a compressed Linux tar file containing a number of diagnostic log files, as well as
some additional system configuration files. This downloaded file will typically be located in the
user’s Downloads folder unless the browser has been configured to save files elsewhere. These
99
files will contain most of the information required to understand why the system malfunctioned.
Simply attach the downloaded tar file to the email prior to sending to
techsupport@fotechsolutions.com (preferably through the Report a problem link mentioned
earlier).
7.4 System, User and Database Management

7.4.1 Save properties snapshot
HWI 4 uses a database to store all of the various property configurations for the Helios
controller. As the number of Alarm Reports grows, and the number of detection statistics,
indicators and stream templates grow, this database can get quite large. In order to restore a
system to a previous state, there is a function that allows a database snapshot to be taken. This
snapshot file is stored on the Helios controller in a system folder. To save a database snapshot,
select the Save properties snapshot item in the Admin menu. Figure 93 shows the prompt that
is displayed, asking for a name to be given to this properties snapshot. Enter in the filename for
the snapshot and click the OK button. This will save the current configuration.
Note: It is recommended to periodically save a properties snapshot as a backup to protect

against any possible file corruption.

Figure 93
7.4.2 Manage snapshots

The last section discussed how to take the current HWI database, and save a snapshot of it by
creating a snapshot database file. Once a snapshot file has been created, a number of options
become available. Snapshot files can be restored in whole or in part to the same Helios
controller they were taken from or they can be downloaded to the local browser computer,
uploaded to another Helios controller and restored in whole or in part. The following
paragraphs discuss the various options that are available once a snapshot file has been created.
Figure 94 shows an example of the Managed snapshots dialog.
100

Figure 94
7.4.2.1 Download a Database Snapshot

To download a database snapshot file, click the Download button beside the desired database.
The file will be automatically downloaded into the default downloads folder on the user’s local
computer. This file can then be emailed to another user to have it uploaded to and imported
into another Helios controller.
7.4.2.2 Upload a Database Snapshot

Once a database snapshot file has been downloaded to your local computer, it can be uploaded
back to the same Helios controller, or to a different Helios controller. To upload a database
snapshot, click on the Choose File button. A standard file selection dialog appears. Navigate to
the folder containing the desired database snapshot file, select it and then click the Choose
button in the file selection dialog. The dialog will be removed and the selected file will be listed
in the Manage Snapshots dialog to the right of the Choose File button. Assuming the correct file
was selected, click the Upload button to have the selected file from your local computer
uploaded to the Helios controller. Once it is uploaded, it will appear in the list of available
snapshot files, and can be selected to import into the Helios controller.
7.4.2.3 Import a Database Snapshot

To import a saved database snapshot, click the Import button beside the desired snapshot file. A
new dialog will be displayed prompting the user to either import (restore) the entire snapshot
database, or to import only a specific component of the snapshot database. Figure 95 & Figure
96 show the Import snapshot dialog. To completely restore the database, ensure that the top
radio button entitled Completely replace current db with import db has been selected, and click
the Submit button. The database will be restored and the system rebooted. Click the Cancel
button to dismiss the Import dialog without restoring the database and rebooting the system.
Note: Even with a complete database restore, the hardware properties are never overridden.
This safeguard has been introduced to allow entire databases to be copied between Helios
controllers without the fear of having the hardware properties overridden with incorrect values.
101

Figure 95

Figure 96
As an alternative to restoring the entire database snapshot, individual elements of the database
can be imported from the database snapshot file. Properties in HWI 4 are divided up into
Channel properties and Alarm Reports (and their components). Channel properties include all
properties that are not specific to a particular stream or Alarm Report. To import a portion of a
database snapshot, ensure the second radio button entitled Select elements to import has been
selected. Then select the desired element of the database snapshot to import by selecting the
appropriate check box.
102
To import the Channel properties, click on the check box under the Channel properties heading.
Once the main Import check box has been selected, a number of additional check boxes become
available. To import all channel properties, click on the check box entitled Import all. This will
automatically select all the check boxes. To import only a subset of the channel properties, click
on the check boxes for the desired elements of the current optical channel. The properties
imported for each of the valid check boxes are the properties included in the corresponding tab
in the Optical channel properties dialog.
Note: Fibre Break properties are included with the Processing properties. Data logging
properties are not available for import.
When importing zones, the imported zones will replace all existing zones. In addition, any
stream overrides defined for a zone, or a suppression zone, will be maintained only if the
associated stream is imported as well.
In addition to the channel properties, any or all of the Alarm Reports, or their components can
be imported. To import all of the Alarm Reports, select the All check box under Alarm Reports
and click on the Submit button. This will automatically select all the Alarm Reports, as well as all
of the components making up each Alarm Report. To import a single Alarm Report, select the
desired Alarm Report and click the Submit button. To import Alarm Report components, select
the desired components and click the Submit button. The Import module allows for either an
entire database to be restored, or just a single Alarm Report component.
Note: When an alarm report is select it’s components (relevant streams and other alarm reports
associated via the High Level Rules) are automatically included and are required for import.
Likewise, when a stream is selected, the associated Detection Statistic template and Indicator
mask are also selected.
7.4.3 Reset to Factory Defaults

There may be times when the edited properties no longer produce acceptable results in the
Sound Field. If this happens, the Helios system can be restored to its Factory Defaults. To
restore the Helios system to its Factory Defaults, select the Reset to factory defaults menu item
from the Admin menu. A confirmation dialog will be displayed asking if you are sure you want
to reset the Helios system to its Factory Defaults, and reboot the system. Click the OK button to
reset and reboot the Helios controller. Click on the Cancel button to dismiss the warning
message without resetting and rebooting the Helios system.
Note: Use this function with extreme caution. Restoring a Helios controller to its factory defaults
will destroy all property changes that have been made. This includes all zone definitions and
their associated properties.
7.4.4 Manage users

As previously mentioned, a new feature with HWI 4 is the requirement for users to login for all
but the View Only interface. The first time the HWI web server is accessed; it presents a very
basic interface referred to as the View Only Interface.
Note: When logging in, never select the ‘Remember this User’ option, as it will interfere with the
login authentication process.
Helios controllers all ship with a pre-‐installed user account called Admin.
103
Note: The password for this pre-‐installed user account is admin.
The first time a user logs into HWI, they must login using this user account. Once logged into
HWI, a new user can be added. This is done by opening up the Admin menu and selecting the
Manage users… menu item. The Users dialog is displayed as shown in Figure 97.

Figure 97
To add a new user, click the icon. Enter in the user’s name, and a username that will be used
to login. Enter in a password, and then confirm the password. Enter in the role for the new
user. A Basic user can only start and stop the Helios controller, but cannot change any
properties. An Admin user can perform all the normal (non-‐Factory) operations. When all the
information has been entered, click on the Apply or Save button to save the new user into the
HWI database.
Note: After a user is created their username cannot be changed. When editing a user’s role or
name it is not necessary to populate the password fields.
To remove an existing user, highlight the desired user, and click the icon. A confirmation
dialog appears as shown in Figure 98 below.

Figure 98
Click the OK button to delete the user, or click the Cancel button to abort the delete operation.
Note: The default Admin (and Factory) users that come with the system cannot be deleted.
7.4.5 Restart Helios

There may be times when the Helios system fails to respond properly. If this happens, click on
the Restart Helios menu item in the Admin menu. A confirmation dialog will be displayed asking
if you are sure you want to reboot the Helios system. If the OK button is selected, the Helios
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system will be rebooted. Click on the Cancel button to dismiss the warning without rebooting
the Helios system.
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Helios Web Interface (HWI)

1 Introduction to Helios Web Interface (HWI)............................................................................. 5

2 Logging in to Helios Web Interface (HWI) ................................................................................ 5

3 Main Display Overview ............................................................................................................. 6

3.1 Window Title ..................................................................................................................... 6

3.2 Menu Bar........................................................................................................................... 7

3.3 Data Graph and Waterfall Display Area ............................................................................ 8

3.4 System Control and Status Dashboard .............................................................................. 8

3.5 System Health Pane........................................................................................................... 8

3.6 Data Logging Dashboard ................................................................................................... 9

4 Getting Started ......................................................................................................................... 9

4.1 Connecting the Fibre Sensor ............................................................................................. 9

4.2 Unlocking the Helios System ............................................................................................. 9

4.3 Setting up the Optics Properties ....................................................................................... 9

4.3.1 Setting the PRF......................................................................................................... 10

4.3.2 Setting up the Pulse Width (PW).............................................................................. 11

4.4 Setting up the Basic Fibre Properties .............................................................................. 12

4.4.1 Physical Fibre Length ............................................................................................... 12

4.4.2 Monitor Start ........................................................................................................... 12

4.4.3 Monitor End ............................................................................................................. 13

4.5 Displaying the Raw Fibre Response................................................................................. 13

4.6 Displaying the Default Sound Field.................................................................................. 15

4.7 Manipulating Display Scales in the Sound Field Display.................................................. 15

4.8 Zooming and Panning...................................................................................................... 15

4.9 Manipulating the Colour Map ......................................................................................... 17

4.10 Logging Raw Data .......................................................................................................... 19

4.11.1 Define a new distance range to display ................................................................. 22

4.11.4 Play from beginning of range ................................................................................. 24

4.11.6 Stop ........................................................................................................................ 24

4.11.7 Loop at end of file .................................................................................................. 24

4.11.8 Fast Forward and Speed Control............................................................................ 24

4.11.9 Seeking to a new start time ................................................................................... 25

4.12.1 The Preprocessing .................................................................................................. 26

4.12.2 Alarm Thresholding................................................................................................ 26

4.12.3 Alarm Indicator Cleaning........................................................................................ 26

4.12.4 Alarm Generation Logic ......................................................................................... 27

5 Advanced Display Features..................................................................................................... 27

5.1 Sound Field Display Types ............................................................................................... 27

5.1.1 Alarm Report Independent Display Types ............................................................... 28

5.1.2 Alarm Report Dependent Display Types .................................................................. 29

5.2 Tracking Velocities on the Waterfall Display ................................................................... 30

5.3 Data Logging Dashboard ................................................................................................. 31

5.3.1 Mounting an External Data Drive............................................................................. 31

5.3.2 Setting up Data Logging Properties.......................................................................... 32

5.3.3 Dynamic Global Data Logging .................................................................................. 32

5.4 System Health Pane......................................................................................................... 32

5.4.1 Processing Module................................................................................................... 33

5.4.2 Alarm Module .......................................................................................................... 33

5.4.3 Data Logging Module ............................................................................................... 33

5.4.4 Reporting Module .................................................................................................... 34

6.1 About this Helios unit ...................................................................................................... 35

6.2 Report a problem ............................................................................................................ 36

6.3 View alarm list ................................................................................................................. 36

6.3.1 Clearing Alarms from Sound Field............................................................................ 37

6.3.2 Filters ....................................................................................................................... 38

6.3.3 Remove Filter ........................................................................................................... 39

6.4 Colour map ...................................................................................................................... 39

6.5 Clear sound field.............................................................................................................. 39

6.6 Clearing alarms from sound field .................................................................................... 39

6.7 Preferences ..................................................................................................................... 39

6.7.1 Time Zone ................................................................................................................ 39

6.7.2 Units ......................................................................................................................... 39

6.7.3 Waterfall Display...................................................................................................... 40

6.8 Printing ............................................................................................................................ 41

3. Condition the alarm indicators using image-‐processing techniques to reduce false