Philip Ji NEC Labs America

Philip N. Ji

Senior Researcher

Optical Networking & Sensing

Posts

NEC Labs America at OFC 2024 San Diego from March 24 – 28

The NEC Labs America team Yaowen Li, Andrea D’Amico, Yue-Kai Huang, Philip Ji, Giacomo Borraccini, Ming-Fang Huang, Ezra Ip, Ting Wang & Yue Tian (Not pictured: Fatih Yaman) has arrived in San Diego, CA for OFC24! Our team will be speaking and presenting throughout the event. Read more for an overview of our participation.

Optical Network Anomaly Detection and Localization Based on Forward Transmission Sensing and Route Optimization

We introduce a novel scheme to detect and localize optical network anomaly using forward transmission sensing, and develop a heuristic algorithm to optimize the route selection. The performance is verified via simulations and network experiments.

Field Implementation of Fiber Cable Monitoring for Mesh Networks with Optimized Multi-Channel Sensor Placement

We develop a heuristic solution to effectively optimize the placement of multi-channel distributed fiber optic sensors in mesh optical fiber cable networks. The solution has beenimplemented in a field network to provide continuous monitoring.

Seamless Service Handover in UAV-based Mobile Edge Computing

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), such as drones, can carry high-performance computing devices (e.g., servers) to provide flexible and on-demand data processing services for theusers in the network edge, leading to the so-called mobile edge computing. In mobile edge computing, researchers have already explored how to optimize the computation offloading and the trajectory planning of UAVs, as well as how to perform the service handover when mobile users move from one location to another. However, there is one critical challenge that has been neglected in past research, which is the limited battery life of UAVs. On average, commercial-level drones only have a battery life of around 30 minutes to 2 hours. As a result, during operation, mobile edge computing carriers have to frequently deal with service handovers that require shifting users and their computing jobs from low-battery UAVs to new fully-charged UAVs. This is the first work that focuses on addressing this challenge with the goal of providing continuous and uninterrupted mobile edge computing service. In particular, we propose a seamless service handover system that achieves minimum service downtime when handling the duty shift between low-battery UAVs and new fullycharged UAVs. In addition, we propose a novel UAV dispatchalgorithm that provides guidelines about how to dispatch new fully-charged UAVs and where to retrieve low-battery UAVs, with the objective of maximizing UAVs’ service time. The effectiveness of the proposed service handover system and the proposed UAV dispatch algorithm is demonstrated through comprehensive simulations using a time-series event-driven simulator.

Drone Detection and Localization using Enhanced Fiber-Optic Acoustic Sensor and Distributed Acoustic Sensing Technology

In recent years, the widespread use of drones has led to serious concerns about safety and privacy. Drone detection using microphone arrays has proven to be a promising method. However, it is challenging for microphones to serve large-scale applications due to the issues of synchronization, complexity, and data management. Moreover, distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) using optical fibers has demonstrated its advantages in monitoring vibrations over long distances but does not have the necessary sensitivity for weak airborne acoustics. In this work, we present, to the best of our knowledge, the first fiber-optic quasi-distributed acoustic sensing demonstration for drone surveillance. We develop enhanced fiber-optic acoustic sensors (FOASs) for DAS to detect drone sound. The FOAS shows an ultra-high measured sensitivity of −101.21 re. 1rad/µPa, as well as the capability for high-fidelity speech recovery. A single DAS can interrogate a series of FOASs over a long distance via optical fiber, enabling intrinsic synchronization and centralized signal processing.We demonstrate the field test of drone detection and localization by concatenating four FOASs as DAS. Both the waveforms and spectral features of the drone sound are recognized. With acoustic field mapping and data fusion, accurate drone localization is achieved with a root-mean-square error (RMSE) of 1.47 degrees. This approach holds great potential in large-scale sound detection applications, such as drone detection or city event monitoring.

Distributed fiber optic sensing over readily available telecom fiber networks

Distributed Fiber Optic Sensing (DFOS) systems rely on measuring and analyzing different properties of the backscattered light of an optical pulse propagating along a fiber cable. DFOS systems can measure temperature, strain, vibrations, or acoustic excitations on the fiber cable and to their unique specifications, they have many applications and advantages over competing technologies. In this talk we will focus on the challenges and applications of DFOS systems using outdoor grade telecom fiber networks instead of standard indoor or some specialty fiber cables.

Availability Analysis for Reliable Distributed Fiber Optic Sensors Placement

We perform the availability analysis for various reliable distributed fiber optic sensor placement schemes in the circumstances of multiple failures. The study can help the network carriers to select the optimal protection scheme for their network sensing services, considering both service availability and hardware cost.

Distributed Optical Fiber Sensing Using Specialty Optical Fibers

Distributed fiber optic sensing systems use long section of optical fiber as the sensing media. Therefore, the fiber characteristics determines the sensing capability and performance. In this presentation, various types of specialty optical fibers and their sensing applications will be introduced and discussed.

Distributed Fiber Optic Sensors Placement for Infrastructure-as-a-Sensor

Recently, the distributed fiber optic sensing (DFOS) techniques have advanced rapidly. There emerges various types of DFOS sensors that can monitor physical parameters such as temperature, strain, and vibration. With these DFOS sensors deployed, the telecom networks are capable of offering additional services beyond communications, such as monitoring road traffic condition, monitoring utility pole health, monitoring city noise and accident, thus evolving to a new paradigm of Infrastructure-as-a-Sensor (IaaSr) or Network-as-a-Sensor (NaaSr). When telecom network carriers upgrade their infrastructures with DFOS sensors to provide such IaaSr/NaaSr services, there will arise a series of critical challenges: (1) where to place the DFOS sensors, and (2) how to provision the DFOS sensing fiber routes to cover the whole network infrastructures with the minimum number of DFOS sensors? We name this as the DFOS placement problem. In this paper, we prove that the DFOS placement problem is an NP-hard problem, and we analyze the upper bound of the number of DFOS sensors used. To facilitate the optimal solution, we formulate the DFOS placement problem with an Integer Linear Programming model that aims at minimizing the number of DFOS sensors used. Furthermore, we propose a cost-efficient heuristic solution, called Explore-and-Pick (EnP), which can achieve a close-to-optimal performance in a fast manner. We analyze the approximation ratio and the computational complexity of the proposed EnP algorithm. In addition, we conduct comprehensive simulations to evaluate the performance of the proposed solutions. Simulation results show that the EnP algorithm can outperform the baseline algorithm by 16% in average and 26% at best, and it achieves a performance that is close to the optimal result obtained by ILP.

Remote Drone Detection and Localization with Optical Fiber Microphones and Distributed Acoustic Sensing

We demonstrate the first fiber-optic drone detection method with ultra-highly sensitive optical microphones and distributed acoustic sensor. Accurate drone localization has been achieved through acoustic field mapping and data fusion.