Optical based sensing emulation with electronics interfacing for aquaculture pond model / Kemo Colley

This project presents the design of an Aquaculture pond model equipped with an emulated optical fiber sensing system. Aquaculture, in large scale production often equires high labor intensity, real-time monitoring, remote sensing capabilities, and control. The objectives of this project are to design an LED emulator circuit and an optical receiver circuit. The system uses an optical fiber as a propagation medium between LED emulator and optical receiver. The optical receiver circuit is designed for interfacing with a microcontroller (Arduino) controlling an aeration system. On the LED emulator part, results show that by varying the sense resistance, the intensity of the LED is varied. The optical fiber was also observed to be able to successfully propagate light from the LED emulator to optical receiver. Readings taken from the optical receiver circuit indicate that, by outputting different levels of light intensity from optical fiber onto a photodetector interfaced to the optical receiver circuit, different voltage levels are produced. The system as a whole was seen to be able to control an aeration system allowing control in an Aquaculture pond model.