Low-Altitude Agentic Networks for Optical Wireless Communication and Sensing: An Oceanic Scenario

TL;DR

This paper proposes a novel optical network architecture with cooperative low-altitude platforms for resilient, high-capacity oceanic communication and sensing across underwater, air, and near-space environments.

Contribution

It introduces a new multi-segment optical network architecture with intelligent control and sensing capabilities for oceanic connectivity, addressing high mobility and maritime dynamics.

Findings

Effective beam tracking under sea-surface perturbations

Enhanced resource optimization for resilient networking

Integration of sensing and communication for near-space targets

Abstract

The cross-domain oceanic connectivity ranging from underwater to the sky has become increasingly indispensable for a plethora of data-consuming maritime applications, such as maritime meteorological monitoring and offshore exploration. However, broadband implementations can be severely hindered by the isolation from terrestrial networks, limited satellite resources, and the fundamental inability of radio waves to bridge the water-air interface at high rates. To this end, this paper introduces an optical network bridging underwater, air and near space, which features a number of cooperative low-altitude platforms (LAPs), serving as compute-capable, sensing-aware, and mission-adaptive agents. The network architecture consists of three scenario-specific segments, i.e., water-air direct link, low-altitude mesh network, and the near-space access network. With coordinate sensing and intelligent control, the system tightly couples beam tracking and resource optimization, enabling resilient networking under high mobility and harsh maritime dynamics. Furthermore, we review enabling technologies spanning from water-air channel modeling, adaptive beam alignment under sea-surface perturbations, to swarm-intelligence networking for decentralized control, integrated pose-topology planning, and optical Integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) for near-space target detection and beam alignment. Finally, open issues are also highlighted, constituting a clear roadmap toward scalable, secure, and ultra-broadband oceanic optical networks.