Leveraging industry to achieve scale advantages, then penetrating into smaller sectors will ultimately form an overall advantage in scale, cost-effectiveness, and data accumulation.
Small and medium-sized enterprises should pursue the path of “specialized, refined, distinctive, and innovative,” which has become a consensus from the government to the business and investment sectors. 36Kr Guangdong has launched a special feature titled “The Promotion Path of ‘Specialized, Refined, Distinctive, and Innovative’ Enterprises,” documenting the development history of “specialized, refined, distinctive, and innovative” enterprises nationwide, exploring the promotion path of “invisible champions,” and discussing the high-quality development of key industries.
Written by｜Zheng Shiting Liu Xiaotong
Edited by｜Jiang Qianjun
According to data from the National Bureau of Statistics, by the end of 2021, the total length of optical cable lines in the country reached 54.81 million kilometers. Due to the passive characteristics of optical cables and the concealed nature of their deployment, optical network assets are referred to as “dumb resources.” The industry has long faced the pain point of difficulty in achieving digital management, construction, and operation and maintenance of optical network assets. This means that the construction, design, and maintenance of optical networks require a large amount of manpower. Luo Dingyuan, Chief Technology Officer of Gaokan (Guangzhou) Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as “Gaokan”), described that focusing on such industry challenges, “Gaokan” introduces optical sensing technology to transform optical networks into networks capable of rapid data collection, quick identification, and high-level perception, achieving efficient management and operation of optical networks through the visualization of optical cable assets and continuous updates of optical cable asset data.
From Passive to “Visualization”Introducing optical sensing technology into the optical network field, data visualization further deepens Gaokan’s business model, forming a data-driven platform through data collection. Luo Dingyuan explained that from design to construction to maintenance, optical sensing technology transforms optical networks from passive entities into perceptive entities, addressing the pain points of data cleaning and verification in such projects, while also facilitating continuous data tracking, enhancing resource utilization and efficiency. For instance, a telecom operator client in a certain province has reduced search time by 70% and improved resource utilization efficiency by 30% during the later stages of promoting the solution. Not only does it enhance efficiency, but Luo Dingyuan believes this solution also addresses three major challenges.First, it simplifies the audit of virtualization engineering workloads. Secondly, it updates accurate data, which greatly aids in achieving precise facility location, saving time in locating underground facilities.It also helps uncover potential resources, activating unused or available data and resources. “Currently, most operators nationwide have adopted Gaokan’s solutions, achieving the introduction of optical sensing technology into the optical network maintenance industry market education.” Luo Dingyuan stated that such solutions enable clients to obtain high-precision geographic information of optical cables without digging, trenching, or climbing poles, providing a rapid verification solution for optical cable geographic information, reducing the workload of optical cable verification. Based on the comparison of characteristic values from external vibrations such as seismic waves, it addresses the issue of external environmental detection, relying on external strategic sources to clarify the topological logical relationships of optical networks. The solution also provides a comprehensive software platform from optical cable routing to fiber core management and optical path management, driving data-driven processes for optical network design, operation, and maintenance through real-time changing data. The original design, construction, and maintenance processes lacked accurate and actionable data support, mostly relying on fragmented drawings, work groups, and phone communications, resulting in low timeliness of information exchange. However, the solution provided by Gaokan can achieve production integration, reducing the reliance on the expertise of technical personnel and enhancing overall efficiency.Transforming from interaction between people to interaction between data and people accelerates the efficiency of design, construction, and maintenance.
Distributed Communication Endows Scenarios with “Touch and Hearing” In addition to the above scenarios, Gaokan also further defines photonic sensing communication. Luo Dingyuan stated that the new generation of photonic sensing communication technology utilizes changes in the external environmental characteristics of optical cables, that is, the inherent characteristics of optical sensing, using external sound wave vibrations to create an actively modulated data transmission solution. Without cutting the cable, it can provide a low-speed data transmission channel, which Luo Dingyuan believes is an industry innovation made by Gaokan. This allows existing optical cables to serve as a medium, transmitting data from points that need to be uploaded around the optical cable to data centers located tens or even hundreds of kilometers away, addressing the distributed communication needs underwater and underground. Gaokan’s accumulation in optical sensing is based on three cores, as Luo Dingyuan introduced.The first core is a fully autonomous embedded optical data processing platform, compared to industry solutions based on laboratory setups, most industry software foundations use lightweight code or graphical development from MATLAB to LabVIEW, with hardware foundations based on American NI acquisition cards and x86 architecture industrial computers, adopting a modular optical path architecture. Gaokan has completed a fully embedded development platform, not based on x86 computing architecture, but on a semiconductor optical chip-integrated optical path architecture, achieving low power consumption and autonomy.The second core lies in the large-scale usage of optical networks by operators in the industry. Gaokan leverages the vast optical network of operators and the global usage scale of 120 million kilometers of optical cables to solve data compression and large-scale data collection issues. By collecting underground vibration waves and seismic data, Gaokan has established a database of underground seismic wave and vibration wave transmission models based on nearly 30,000 kilometers of optical cables, considering different terrains, temperatures, humidity, and environments, thus achieving large-scale differentiation. In terms of smart city applications, the main scenarios involve tracking traffic flow in urban transportation or monitoring underground environments, such as underground data monitoring for gas and water supply companies. Luo Dingyuan stated that large-scale applications have also been realized in fields such as transportation, energy, power grids, and oceans. Entering the operator industry, Luo Dingyuan explained, to become a mainstream supplier for operators, a comprehensive and complete solution is required, from laser design, modulators, semiconductor optical amplifiers, to chip design, packaging, module integration, and algorithm organization into product solutions, thus the entry barrier is relatively high. From a fundamental perspective, the industry requires “cost-effectiveness.” Raw materials such as wafers and gases are made into chips, then devices, modules, and complete systems, and finally combined with algorithms to form the final solution.By breaking through the industrial chain before scaling, profits can achieve effects of “one times three” or “one times four,” which will form another core advantage. Currently, Gaokan’s industry clients are primarily B-end infrastructure users, with major layouts in the four industries of operators, power grids, oil, and national defense. Luo Dingyuan described, “Gaokan’s solutions provide ‘touch’ and ‘hearing’ to infrastructure in cities, suburbs, and underwater, monitoring changes and health of infrastructure through continuous ‘touch’ and ‘hearing’ perception.”
Building Industry Advantages with Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches The weakness of the optical sensing industry lies in the “qualitative and quantitative” challenges brought about by the diversification of application scenarios, Luo Dingyuan explained, for example, obtaining underground seismic wave and sound wave states differs from offline single-point data, as this scenario involves how to present time and what type of event it is, requiring a large amount of engineering testing. Based on targeted engineering, it is possible to transform different scenario needs into smaller scenarios through scenario design, achieving “qualitative and quantitative” results. Therefore, enterprises need to have the ability to “discover scenarios,” which Luo Dingyuan believes is Gaokan’s operational advantage, that is, “turning qualitative aspects into quantitative ones”. Thus, leveraging industry to achieve scale advantages and then penetrating into smaller sectors will ultimately form an overall advantage in scale, cost-effectiveness, and data accumulation. Speaking about the understanding of industry by industry, Luo Dingyuan stated, “Distributed fiber sensors transform traditional optical cables into a perceptive state, but the ‘perception’ aspect still has significant exploration space.” The challenge of distributed fiber sensors lies in their ultra-flexibility and tensile strength to detect more positional variables. Introducing new generation technologies such as magnetorheological fluid fibers and photonic crystal fibers will make it easier to obtain sound waves, seismic waves, and even electromagnetic field waves, how to bring these technologies out of the laboratory and quickly engineer them is an urgent problem for the industry. The low price of optical fiber cables is due to the extreme cost-effectiveness achieved over more than 40 years of global popularization. In Luo Dingyuan’s view, distributed special optical fiber sensors are just beginning, currently still in the demo stage, and the price gap compared to communication optical cables remains over 100 times, which also poses certain challenges for the industry. Gaokan’s layout planning focuses on several breakthrough cores across the entire industry chain: the first is the domestic substitution of key photonic sensing lasers, special gratings, etc. Luo Dingyuan believes that the investment and output expectations in this area need to be viewed with a long-term perspective. The second breakthrough core lies in reducing the price gap with communication optical cables, from hundreds of times to dozens of times. To solve the generality issue, it is essential to address the problems inherent in distributed special optical fiber sensors. Deepening into the industry, engaging with customers, and understanding their needs is what Luo Dingyuan considers the third breakthrough core, which is the foundation for merging fragmented demands into a generalized platform. In the future, Gaokan’s focus will be on increasing sales scale. Luo Dingyuan stated that the industry’s barriers and ceilings do not lie in chip manufacturing and wafer processing, but in data accumulation—having 100 fragmented scenarios is necessary to solve problems, which is also the industry’s greatest value. Currently, the distributed special optical fiber sensor industry is still in the accumulation of application technologies, and in the future, the accumulation of underlying technologies will also bring new disruptions to the industry.
