AI Assisted Next Gen Outdoor Optical Networks: Camera Sensing for Monitoring and User Localization

TL;DR

This paper introduces a hybrid optical sensing system for outdoor optical networks that accurately localizes users and monitors network security using a model-informed approach combined with machine learning, enabling real-time deployment.

Contribution

It presents a novel hybrid method combining optics-informed modeling and data-driven calibration for user localization in outdoor optical networks, improving accuracy and efficiency.

Findings

Hybrid approach outperforms generic deep learning baseline in accuracy.

Achieves high localization accuracy with low computational cost.

Optimal array resolution around 60x60-80x80 for real-time use.

Abstract

We consider outdoor optical access points (OAPs), which, enabled by recent advances in metasurface technology, have attracted growing interest. While OAPs promise high data rates and strong physical-layer security, practical deployments still expose vulnerabilities and misuse patterns that necessitate a dedicated monitoring layer - the focus of this work. We therefore propose a user positioning and monitoring system that infers locations from spatial intensity measurements on a photodetector (PD) array. Specifically, our hybrid approach couples an optics-informed forward model and sparse, model-based inversion with a lightweight data-driven calibration stage, yielding high accuracy at low computational cost. This design preserves the interpretability and stability of model-based reconstruction while leveraging learning to absorb residual nonidealities and device-specific distortions. Under identical hardware and training conditions (both with 5 x 10^5 samples), the hybrid method attains consistently lower mean-squared error than a generic deep-learning baseline while using substantially less training time and compute. Accuracy improves with array resolution and saturates around 60 x 60-80 x 80, indicating a favorable accuracy-complexity trade-off for real-time deployment. The resulting position estimates can be cross-checked with real-time network logs to enable continuous monitoring, anomaly detection (e.g., potential eavesdropping), and access control in outdoor optical access networks.