NEC Laboratories America

Optical Sensing & Solutions

From early concepts and laboratory validation to proven field deployments on live infrastructure, we develop technologies that sense the physical world, transform observations into intelligence, and enable informed action. Building on our expertise in optics and photonics, we are expanding toward multimodal sensing, AI-powered understanding, and intelligent systems that interact with the physical world.

Deployed telecom cables, urban fiber networks, and emerging optical sensors provide a powerful foundation for observing the physical world at scale. Our research spans forward-looking theoretical studies, cutting-edge experiments, artificial intelligence, and world- and industry-first field trials. We transform existing infrastructure into dense, real-time sensing platforms capable of monitoring complex environments over large areas.

Our research follows a broad sense–understand–act vision. We develop optical and distributed fiber sensing technologies that capture physical phenomena; AI methods that interpret complex signals, combine information across sensors, diagnose events, and predict changing conditions; and intelligent solutions that translate these insights into decisions and responses. Looking ahead, we envision extending this foundation beyond optical sensing to multimodal sensing and autonomous systems, including robotics, that can perceive, reason about, and respond to the physical world.

Our current work spans optical sensing, infrared imaging and spectroscopy, radio-frequency spectrum sensing and AI-enabled sensing analytics. These technologies can detect, localize, and characterize vibrations, intrusions, equipment conditions, and environmental changes along an infrastructure network’s physical route. By integrating sensing with edge computing and AI, we seek to move beyond data collection toward real-time understanding, prediction, and automated response.

By uniting advanced sensing, physical-world AI, and intelligent action, Optical Sensing & Solutions aims to create safer, more resilient, and more autonomous systems for infrastructure, utilities, transportation, environmental monitoring, public safety, smart cities, and intelligent manufacturing.

Join Us

Are you interested in joining us? We seek the next generation of thought leaders in optical sensing for researcher positions. Outstanding applicants pursuing a career in optical sensing are encouraged to visit our careers page to learn more and apply for available positions.

Summer 2026 Internship Applications are now closed.

Exciting internship opportunities for Summer 2027 will be available on our internship page this fall.  We are looking for students pursuing advanced degrees in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering. Internships are typically 3 months long during the summer. The benefits of working for us include the opportunity to quickly join a project team applying cutting-edge technology to industry-leading concepts.

To apply for a Summer Internship, visit our Internship page.

Learn More

Want to learn more about our optical sensing & solutions department? Meet our team of experts, check out our blog posts, or read our latest publications.

Featured Optical Sensing & Solutions Research Projects

Latest Optical Sensing & Solutions News

Quantum Wrapper Datagrams Coexisting with a Distributed Temperature Sensor

We demonstrate coexistence of polarization-entangled photon pairs and Raman-based temperature sensing in a 48-km deployed fiber link. We map fiber temperature changes measured by the sensor to the arrival time delays of the photon pairs.

MIZAR: A 159M-Parameter Audio-Language Model for Audio Understanding

Audio-language models (ALMs) integrate acoustic perception with the knowledge encoded in language models, enabling contextual understanding of auditory events. Making these capabilities practical on devices with limited memory and computation motivates our focus on small ALMs with fewer than 200M parameters.

Reward-tilted on-policy distillation for acoustic grounding in audio-language models

Audio-language models (ALMs) can exploit textual shortcuts to answer questions while overlooking acoustic evidence, weakening audio understanding. On-policy distillation (OPD) trains compact ALMs by supervising student-generated responses with teacher predictions, but does not explicitly distinguish

Detection, Localization and Tracking of Underwater Acoustic Sources via A Passive Fiber Optic Hydrophone Array

A fiber optic hydrophone array comprising four passive fiber mandrels, interrogated by a distributed acoustic sensing system was deployed in a lake for field testing. Several stationary and moving underwater acoustic sources were localized, continuously tracked, and their acoustic signals were enhanced

Over-80-km Transmission of Image-Derived Semantic Data via a Distributed Fiber-Optic Acoustic Sensing Link

We demonstrate underwater acoustic transmission of image-derived semantic messages using an over-80-km distributed fiber-optic acoustic sensing link with chirp-coded pulse interrogation,Raman amplification, and fiber-optic hydrophones. At 50 bps with Raman amplification, 100 scene-graph messages (21,193

Advancing Forward-Transmission Fibre Sensing for Precise Event Localisation

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.