Smart European Networks for Sensing the Environment and Internet quality | SENSEI

SENSEI will develop devices and technologies to turn the global telecommunication fibre network into a pervasive distributed sensor and make the network more resilient and efficient.

SENSEI aims to develop new photonic devices and technologies to enhance the security, resilience, and efficiency of telecommunication fibre networks through improved supervision capabilities, while exploiting them as large-scale distributed environmental sensors. Funded by the European Commission under the Horizon Europe programme with €5 million over 3 years, the project brings together 15 partners from 6 EU countries with diversified and complementary expertise in photonics, optical metrology, geoscience, optical networking and network provisioning. 

SENSEI stems from the idea that the conventional network elements enabling telecommunications (e.g. transceivers or amplifiers), as well as the fibre cable itself, can host ad-hoc sensing capability while carrying data. Specifically, the fibre is subject to external stress and deformations due to ambient or anthropogenic noise affecting data transmission parameters. These deformations can be recorded by suitable photonic techniques, turning the global telecommunication network into a distributed and pervasive grid with thousands of sensing endpoints.

SENSEI will develop techniques to probe fibres already in use for data traffic, fitting the network’s architectural constraints without causing service disruption. Furthermore, it will design dedicated protocols to handle data collected by a heterogeneous set of sensing elements and integrate them into the network control architecture. This is a crucial step towards extracting exploitable information from a huge volume of data. 

To demonstrate relevant use cases, SENSEI will have access to thousands of kilometres of fibres deployed in various environments, ranging from the Mediterranean Sea to volcanic and seismic areas in Italy and Iceland, but also aerial cables and telecommunication networks in metropolitan areas. The consortium partners will rely heavily on existing infrastructures used by National Metrology Institutes to carry precise time signals, such as the Italian Quantum Backbone in Italy and Refimeve in France. SENSEI will involve commercial operators and network providers. 

GFZ will be in charge of the coordination of Work-Package 2: WP2 implements the developed techniques in various real-field scenarios, ranging from urban areas to sea-beds, and highly seismic regions. We will search for signatures of various events, targeting continued acquisition, autonomous event recognition and advanced processing. In addition, a postdoc at the GFZ will focus on Iceland test-site.

Time Frame

  • 12/2024 - 11/2027

Funding

  • EU

Principal Investigators

Personnel

Cooperations

Publications/Results

  • Jousset, P., Reinsch, T., Ryberg, T. et al. Dynamic strain determination using fibre-optic cables allows imaging of seismological and structural features. Nat Commun 9, 2509 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-04860-y
  • Flóvenz, Ó. G., Wang, R., Hersir, G. P., Dahm, T., Hainzl, S., Vassileva, M., ... & Milkereit, C. (2022). Cyclical geothermal unrest as a precursor to Iceland’s 2021 Fagradalsfjall eruption. Nature Geoscience, 15(5), 397-404. 
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