Fondazione LINKS is a non-profit Research Center that has been operating for about 20 years at a national and international level in the fields of applied research, innovation, and technology transfer. Founded by the Politecnico di Torino and the Compagnia di San Paolo banking foundation, the LINKS Foundation is an entity composed of more than 185 researchers that covers technical-scientific disciplines within the scope of digital technologies and territorial development, including Artificial Intelligence, connected systems and IoT, cybersecurity, advanced computing systems, satellite systems, and fiber optic communication systems. It maintains extensive collaborations with global academic institutions, holds a prominent role in European research through more than 23 EU partnerships, and fosters strong industrial ties with over 250 companies.  

Advancing optical sensing innovation with large-scale network testbeds

LINKS has been involved in the optical sensing field since 2020, with many articles published in different conferences. Its main expertise is in optical communication and, since it hosts the 2000 km optical testbed available for non-linear propagation experiments, model validation, testing of network control layers supported by machine learning techniques, it can provide real testing with optical detection and optical communication equipment. Furthermore, this network test bed can reach the Point of Presence connected to the GARR network, also member of the SENSEI consortium, extending the monitoring to a real 28 km optical network ring, allowing the analysis of artificial phenomena such as traffic, maintenance work, etc. 

Enabling real-world experimentation on 2000 km optical communication network

The 2000 km optical test bed has been installed and successfully verified. It is ready to host all the optical detection devices developed in the SENSEI project to test their effectiveness and compare their performance with solutions currently available on the market. An FPGA (Field-Programmable Gate Array) is under development to collect and elaborate the phase data coming from the Coherent Laser Interferometer device of INRIM, also member of the SENSEI consortium.

Toward seamless sensing–communication coexistence

By the SENSEI project, LINKS aims to deepen its experience with the various sensing techniques proposed and used in real world scenarios. This will include the impairments that can arise by sharing the same infrastructure between communication and sensing.

…more to come! Stay tuned…