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

A Silicon Photonic-Electronic Neural Network for Fiber Nonlinearity Compensation

In optical communication systems, fibre nonlinearity is the major obstacle in increasing the transmission capacity. Typically, digital signal processing techniques and hardware are used to deal with optical communication signals, but increasing speed and computational complexity create challenges for

Guided Acoustic Brillouin Scattering Measurements In Optical Communication Fibers

Guided acoustic Brillouin (GAWBS) noise is measured using a novel, homodyne measurement technique for four commonly used fibers in long-distance optical transmission systems. The measurements are made with single spans and then shown to be consistent with separate multi-span long-distance measurements.

Optical Fiber Sensing Technology Visualizing the Real World via Network Infrastructures – AI technologies for traffic monitoring

Optical fibers have a sensing function that captures environmental changes around the fiber cable. According to the recent technology evolution of optical transmission and AI, the application of the fiber sensing has expanded and visualization accuracy has improved. We have proposed to monitor the traffic

An Efficient Approach for Placing Distributed Fiber Optic Sensors with Concurrent Sensing Capability

We propose an efficient approach for placing distributed fiber optic sensors (DFOS) with concurrent sensing capability. It consumes 5.7% to 9.5% fewer sensors than that using DFOS without concurrent sensing, for covering the same network.

Field Trial of Cable Safety Protection and Road Traffic Monitoring over Operational 5G Transport Network with Fiber Sensing and On-Premise AI Technologies

We report the distributed-fiber-sensing field trial results over a 5G-transport-network. A standard communication fiber is used with real-time AI processing for cable self-protection, cable-cut threat assessment and road traffic monitoring in a long-term continuous test.

Survivable Distributed Fiber Optic Sensors Placement against Single Link Failure

Empowered by the rapid advancement of fiber optic sensing techniques in recent years, network carriers are able to upgrade their network infrastructure beyond the basic communication services with extra sensing applications and services (e.g., monitoring traffic and road condition, leakage detection,