Real-Time Thermal Symmetry Control of Data Centers Based on Distributed Optical Fiber Sensing and Model Predictive Control

The high energy consumption and spatiotemporal thermal asymmetry of data center cooling systems have become critical bottlenecks constraining their green and sustainable development. Traditional point-type temperature sensors suffer from insufficient spatial coverage, while conventional feedback control strategies exhibit delayed responses and limited adaptability under dynamic workloads. To address these challenges, this study proposes a real-time thermal symmetry management framework for data centers based on distributed fiber optic temperature sensing and model predictive control (MPC). The proposed system employs Brillouin scattering-based distributed sensing to continuously acquire high-density temperature measurements from thousands of points along a single optical fiber, enabling fine-grained perception of the three-dimensional thermal field. On this basis, a hybrid prediction model integrating thermodynamic physical equations with a Temporal Convolutional Network–Bidirectional Gated Recurrent Unit (TCN–BiGRU) deep neural network is developed to achieve accurate and stable spatiotemporal temperature forecasting. Furthermore, a symmetry-aware MPC controller is designed with the dual objectives of minimizing cooling energy consumption and suppressing thermal field deviations, thereby restoring temperature uniformity through rolling-horizon optimization. Experimental validation in a production data center demonstrates that the distributed sensing system achieves a measurement deviation of 0.12 °C, while the hybrid prediction model attains a root mean square error of 0.41 °C, representing a 26.8% improvement over baseline methods. The MPC-based control strategy reduces daily cooling energy consumption by 14.4%, improves the power usage effectiveness (PUE) from 1.58 to 1.47, and significantly enhances both thermal symmetry and operational safety. The Thermal Symmetry Index (TSI) decreased from 0.060 to 0.035, indicating a 41.7% improvement in spatial temperature distribution uniformity. The TSI is defined as the ratio of spatial temperature standard deviation to mean temperature, where lower values indicate better thermal uniformity; TSI < 0.03 represents excellent symmetry, 0.03–0.05 indicates good symmetry, and TSI > 0.08 suggests significant asymmetry requiring intervention. These results provide an effective and practical solution for intelligent operation, energy-efficient control, and low-carbon transformation of next-generation green data centers.