Telecom Infrastructure encompasses the physical and logical assets that enable telecommunications services, including fiber-optic cables, conduits, manholes, towers, amplifiers, switching equipment, and data centers. Beyond carrying network traffic, these assets represent a densely distributed physical presence across urban and rural environments. In sensing research, existing telecom infrastructure serves as a platform for deploying distributed fiber-optic sensors capable of detecting temperature, strain, vibration, and other environmental signals without additional hardware installation.
We present field trial on urban monitoring over telecom networks using Rayleigh-based distributed temperature/ strain sensor (DTSS), showing the capability of detecting subtle infrastructure signatures including manhole locations, road traffic, sprinklers and underground leakage events.