A distributed optical fiber sensing system for data center thermal monitoring

Zhen Chen; Shuyi Pei; Bo Tang; Gerald Hefferman; Haibo He; Qing Yang; Tao Wei

doi:10.1117/12.2285075

27 March 2018 A distributed optical fiber sensing system for data center thermal monitoring

Zhen Chen, Shuyi Pei, Bo Tang, Gerald Hefferman, Haibo He, Qing Yang, Tao Wei

Proceedings Volume 10598, Sensors and Smart Structures Technologies for Civil, Mechanical, and Aerospace Systems 2018; 105982E (2018) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2285075
Event: SPIE Smart Structures and Materials + Nondestructive Evaluation and Health Monitoring, 2018, Denver, Colorado, United States

Abstract

Temperature monitoring and regulation is a critical aspect of data center administration. Currently, conventional discrete transistor-based thermal sensing systems are widely used for this purpose, which requires a discrete device for each temperature measurement in the special domain. This leads to an increase in both complexity and cost as the data center grows in scale. This manuscript describes a real-time multiplexed optical fiber thermal sensing system for data center applications which simultaneously measures thousands of discrete points along the length of the fiber under test. This system allows for real-time thermal monitoring of several hundred servers with a spatial resolution of 1 cm, a temperature resolution of <1 °C, and a system update rate of 1 Hz. Temperature inside of individual servers and the ambient room temperature outside the racks can be simultaneously monitored in real time using a single optical fiber probe. To investigate this concept, a pilot experiment is presented which monitored the dynamic server temperature distribution using the proposed fiber sensing system. Temperature data recorded using built-in thermal sensors within the CPU of the server under test were simultaneously recorded and compared to measurements made. In order to induce a temperature change within the server, a computationally intensive task was undertaken during temperature testing. Both methods of temperature measurement demonstrated similar trends, indicating that the proposed multiplexed optical fiber-based system has substantial potential as a scalable method of distributed data center temperature monitoring.

Conference Presentation

Citation Download Citation

Zhen Chen, Shuyi Pei, Bo Tang, Gerald Hefferman, Haibo He, Qing Yang, and Tao Wei "A distributed optical fiber sensing system for data center thermal monitoring", Proc. SPIE 10598, Sensors and Smart Structures Technologies for Civil, Mechanical, and Aerospace Systems 2018, 105982E (27 March 2018); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2285075

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