Abstract:
The telecommunication and utility cable monitoring system was implemented to protect the cable tampering. Cable tampering occurs despite the fact that methods have been developed, to solve and decrease cable tampering cases such as cable tampering prevention campaigns at the national and international level, organizing security patrols, replacing existing cable with fiber cables and I-Watch system installation. The objective of the research was to design and implement a cable tampering monitoring system which is able to monitor, detect, pinpoint the location and give the distance from the sensor at which the cable tampering took place. The system is an improvement on the traditional cable anti-theft monitoring system, the method of tracking resonance signal frequency was implemented. The system incorporates a sensing circuit which detects a change on the capacitance value of the cable and converts it into an equivalent frequency value, Field-Programable Gate Array (FPGA) board is utilized to convert the frequency into the cable length (the distance from sensor of cable which was taken away), after detecting an anomaly on the cable (tampered with) the output of the system is divided into two parts which are display mode and messaging mode. For display mode, the system uses a Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) which displays the GPS Coordinates of the location where the cable tampering took place and the distance from sensor of the cable which has been tampered with. In the messaging mode, the FPGA activates the GSM module and the module sends alert flag message to the user when the cable is tampered with.
Description:
M. Tech. (Department of Process Control and Computer Systems, Faculty of Engineering and Technology), Vaal University of Technology.
