Bridging distributed fiber-optic sensing and optical performance-aware communication via telecom pilots

Network surveillance and robust transmission are pivotal trends in the upcoming sixth-generation fixed network (F6G), driving the evolution of integrated sensing and communication over optical fiber (ISACoF). A critical challenge in designing ISACoF systems is leveraging existing fiber networks to enable high-fidelity distributed fiber-optic sensing (DFOS) without consuming additional communication resources. For the first time, to our knowledge, we propose integrating optical performance monitoring (OPM) and phase-sensitive optical time-domain reflectometry ( φ -OTDR)-based DFOS within a unified high-speed communication system by utilizing multiple linear frequency modulation (LFM) pilots commonly employed in telecommunication. Our approach redesigns the communication frame header to enable DFOS and multi-functional OPM without extra resource consumption. Frequency offset estimation (FOE), longitudinal power profile (LPP) estimation, optical signal-to-noise ratio (OSNR) estimation, and DFOS are achieved via the multiple LFM pilots in the integrated sensing and optical performance monitoring header (ISMH). Furthermore, the communication and sensing performance is experimentally explored under varying power allocations between the ISMH and the communication payload. The utilization of LFM-based ISMH establishes a paradigm for future multi-functional elastic optical networks and significantly enhances the scalability of fiber networks.