Detectability of Harmful Fiber Vibrations Buried in Realistic Broadband Acoustic Backgrounds at Varying Intensity

Paper in proceeding, 2026

Optical fiber networks underpin global telecommunications and are increasingly exposed to sabotage, motivating sensing that improves their sustainability and resilience. Deployed fibers can act as distributed sensors, with State of Polarization (SOP) analysis offering high sensitivity to perturbations through stressand bending-induced birefringence. This work characterizes the SOP signatures of harmful vibrations, an 80 Hz excavator harmonic, alone and with a 135 Hz tone, buried in realistic broadband acoustic backgrounds at varying intensity levels, establishing the physical basis for detecting masked threats on jacketed patch cable.