The purpose of CF2T project is to develop a competitive foundation, immerse it as part of a precommercial project and validate the concept in a real sea environment. The innovative foundation will be designed to decrease construction costs, with modular interfaces to allow an installation in several packages (foundation parts, ballasts, turbine) in order to limit the installation vessel’s crane capacity requirement, which will also reduce installation costs. The different alternatives to reduce the structure construction costs and modularity will be evaluated including the design of a hybrid foundation combining concrete and steel. The new foundation should also have an adaptive interface with the seabed in order to avoid any seabed preparation. In addition, the project will develop a monitoring system to have a better understanding of loads applied to the structure for future foundations developments. This monitoring will allow to carry out a survey of the structural health for preventive maintenance which will contribute to improve reliability of the foundation. This report is the first deliverable in WP6 (Foundation Monitoring), namely D6.1 Sensor characteristics and implementation report. RISE led the work in collaboration with SAITEC and ALKIT. This report proposes sensor characteristics and implementation for the foundation of tidal turbine designed within the project. A literature review is firstly included on Structural Health Monitoring (SHM), relevant SHM techniques and SHM’s applicability to both concrete and offshore structures. Fibre optics, specifically Fibre Bragg Grating (FBG), were identified to be the most suitable solution for SHM of the concrete foundation. Critical measurement areas and performance indicators for the concrete foundation were identified and a detailed measurement scheme was proposed. Implementation on the laboratory scale was studied for both material and component levels, i.e., steel reinforcement and concrete surface. It was observed that the fibre optics were able to measure the distribution of strains coherently and accurately on steel reinforcement subjected to tensile loading, all while proving to be durable against high levels of corrosion. Detection of strain in the concrete surface which could indicate tilting and/or onset of cracking was also possible with the proposed fibre optic system.