EAGER: An Integrated Fiber Sensing and Communication Living Lab in the Research Triangle

Fiber optical networks have been widely deployed at different scales to form the core infrastructure of today's Internet backbone, telecommunication networks, and smart connected communities. In addition to delivering high bandwidth data services at deterministic low latency, each fiber-optic cable can also serve as a high-resolution sensor since it is sensitive to different environmental effects such as vibration, strain, and temperature, due to linear and nonlinear light scattering. As a result, fiber optical networks can be naturally transformed into a large-scale distributed sensor network with the fiber footprint being a continuous sensing medium. The goal of the proposed project is to leverage an existing extensive testbed in Duke-Durham Research Triangle Park in Raleigh, NC, augmented with sensing and measurement capabilities, to investigate fiber sensing-based heterogeneous traffic monitoring as well as its co-existence with data communication networks at scale. At the societal level, this project will enable more efficient optical spectrum utilization and network operation, as well as more sustainable cities and communities. Using the deployed testbed equipped with advanced fiber sensing and communication equipment, this project targets two pilot experiments leveraging the unique large-scale fiber footprint (i) Fiber sensing-based heterogeneous traffic detection and monitoring in extremely noisy measurements for smart city applications, and (ii) Integrated fiber sensing and communication for improved optical spectrum utilization and efficiency in practical enterprise-level networks. Overall, the testbed can be used to conduct unprecedented fine-grained and long-term fiber sensing and communication experiments and measurements, and to serve as a platform for research in the area of integrated fiber sensing and communication. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.