An optical fiber intrusion detection system for railway security

•In-field usage of an intrusion detection system using optical fiber technology is demonstrated .•The working principle and the intrusion detection system architecture are reported.•Installation procedure and system setup are illustrated.•Several tests are carried out on the intrusion detection system.•The results demonstrate that this system detects and localizes human intrusions.

In this paper, we report the in-field demonstration of an intrusion detection system implemented using Fiber Bragg Grating (FBG) sensors. The system is conceived to protect the perimeter of an area from unauthorized accesses to railways assets. As a case study, we installed and tested the system in a real scenario, and several field trials were performed to validate the system's ability to recognize any human intrusion within the protected area. The proposed sensing system is a powerful tool to detect intruders, especially in real scenarios where protection fences are not practicable. The proposed intrusion detection system represents a valuable solution to improve railway security.