From forward-looking theoretical studies to cutting-edge experiments to world- and industry-first technology field trials, our Optical Communications & Computing department delivers globally recognized innovation in optical communications and computing, translating future vision into present reality. As global data demand accelerates, optical communications and computing technologies must evolve together to keep pace. Our department advances the science of high-capacity optical transmission alongside emerging photonic computing architectures, delivering research that spans theoretical modeling, laboratory experimentation, and real-world field trials. Read our latest news and publications to learn more.
Dr. Yue-Kai Huang leads the new Optical Communications and Computing department at NEC Laboratories America. Learn about his background, the department’s likely research agenda in coherent transmission, self-managing networks, and photonic computing, plus the industry trends driving it.
We propose a virtual session ID-based satellite handover scheme for LEO satellite networks. The proposed scheme can significantly reduce latency spikes and packet loss during handover, thus achieving seamless session-level continuity and improved communicationperformance.
An automated methodology for optical line systems integrating probing transceivers to initialize a system-level digital twin is described. Physical model parameters are inferred from scratch by combining end-to-end spectrum measurements, pre-FEC BER and optical amplifier telemetry, enabling near-optimal configuration, model alignment, and precise QoT tuning.
We review recent progress in forward-transmission fibre sensing from a practical perspective, revisit the fundamental challenges in the localisation performance, and discuss possible approaches to improve event localisation accuracy.
We demonstrate passive borehole velocity profiling using coherent DAS on a 3 km geothermal well. Deconvolution interferometry with phase-weighted stacking recovers interval velocities from ambient and ground micro-vibrations without active sources, achieving <80 m/s mean absolute error at 0.5–1 km depth against a calibration shot ground truth.
Distributed Acoustic Sensing enables continuous monitoring along optical fibers. This workreviews the use of existing telecom fiber networks for sensing applications such as traffic monitoring,aerial cable weight detection, bioacoustics monitoring and PIG tracking.
NEC Laboratories America is bringing a strong research presence to ECOC 2026, the European Conference on Optical Communications in Málaga, Spain. Researchers from the Optical Communications & Computing and Optical Sensing & Solutions departments will present papers, posters, and workshop talks covering underwater acoustic sensing, power-efficient submarine cable design, earthquake and tsunami monitoring through telecom fiber, and forward-transmission fiber sensing.
NEC Laboratories America has formed two new departments from its Optical Networking and Sensing group. Optical Communications and Computing, led by Yue-Kai Huang, and Optical Sensing and Solutions, led by Yue Tian, will carry the lab’s photonics research into new territory.
We propose to jointly optimize path and gateway selection to achieve load balancing for mobile orbital domain-based hierarchical routing in satellite networks. The load at bottleneck gateway satellites can be reduced by 22% on average.
We develop closed-form formulas for PDL-induced SNR margins using solutions based on central limit theorem. Experimental validations confirm accurate and conservative performancepredictions, enabling precise quality of transmission assessment and margin-aware design in optical networks.