Method to use transport microsimulation models to create synthetic distributed acoustic sensing datasets

This research introduces a new method for creating synthetic Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) datasets from transport microsimulation models. The process involves modeling detailed vehicle interactions, trajectories, and characteristics from the PTV VISSIM transport microsimulation tool. It then applies the Flamant-Boussinesq approximation to simulate the resulting ground deformation detected by virtual fiber-optic cables. These synthetic DAS signals serve as large-scale, scenario-controlled, labeled datasets on training machine learning models for various transport applications. We demonstrate this by training several U-Net convolutional neural networks to enhance spatial resolution (reducing it to half the original gauge length), filtering traffic signals by vehicle direction, and simulating the effects of alternative cable layouts. The methodology is tested using simulations of real road scenarios, featuring a fiber-optic cable buried along the westbound shoulder with sections deviating from the roadside. The U-Net models, trained solely on synthetic data, showed promising performance (e.g., validation MSE down to 0.0015 for directional filtering) and improved the detectability of faint signals, like bicycles among heavy vehicles, when applied to real DAS measurements from the test site. This framework uniquely integrates detailed traffic modeling with DAS physics, providing a novel tool to develop and evaluate DAS signal processing techniques, optimize cable layout deployments, and advance DAS applications in complex transportation monitoring scenarios. Creating such a procedure offers significant potential for advancing the application of DAS in transportation monitoring and smart city initiatives.