Wataru Kohno
About
Researcher researching in fiber-optic and acoustic sensing technologies, with a background in distributed acoustic sensing (DAS), signal processing, and physics-based modeling. Currently at NEC Corporation, developing scalable sensing systems that transform standard optical fibers into large-scale, passive sensor arrays for infrastructure monitoring, security, and environmental observation.
Research Focus
- Distributed fiber-optic sensing (DFOS), especially distributed acoustic sensing (DAS)
- Fiber-optic acoustic recognition and AI-enhanced sensing for infrastructure monitoring
- Advanced vibrometry and vibration sensing techniques
- Applications: Perimeter security, seismic monitoring, and infrastructure protection
Research Expertise
- Distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) and φ-OTDR
- Fiber-optic vibrometry and acoustic sensing systems
- Signal acquisition and system modeling for sensing devices
- Quantum field theory and many-body theory
- Superconductivity and vortex physics
- Bose–Einstein condensates and quantum gases
- Generalizing quantum statistical principles for correlated phenomena
- Time–frequency analysis and spectral methods
- Acoustic signal processing and feature extraction
- Physics-aware data generation and sound event classification
- Integration of ML models with physical sensing constraints
- Numerical simulation and modeling of physical systems
- Python for data analysis, prototyping, and ML (PyTorch/NumPy)
- Data assimilation and model-based inference
- LaTeX for scientific writing and high-impact publication
Recent Primary Publications
Demonstrated semantic scene-graph transmission over an 80-km underwater DAS-based fiber-optic sensing link with an ultra-low bit error rate.
Demonstrated a multi-fiber, multi-DAS array system achieving sample-level synchronization across independent sensors without additional hardware.
Proposed Mix-CLAP, a computationally efficient, noise-aware CLAP model that fuses clean/noise-distilled lightweight audio encoders.
Proposed a multi–sensor-head architecture that enables scalable distributed acoustic sensing with remote laser sensing.
Introduced text-guided synthetic data generation that preserves key characteristics of fiber-optic acoustic sensing systems.
Demonstrated underwater acoustic data transmission using DAS-enabled optical fiber in a real underwater environment.
Education
Theoretical research on phase transitions, superconductivity, and Bose–Einstein condensates (BECs) using quantum field theory and statistical physics. Generalized established theories based on fundamental quantum statistical principles and applied them to strongly correlated phenomena:
- Superconducting Vortex Systems: Developed approaches beyond Eilenberger and Ginzburg–Landau theories.
- Weakly Interacting BECs: Applied methods beyond Gross–Pitaevskii and Bogoliubov approximations.
Selected PhD Works
Theoretical study of vortex charging and Hall response in an Abrikosov vortex lattice, based on augmented quasiclassical equations of superconductivity.
Developed a variational many-body ground-state description beyond mean-field for multi-component miscible Bose–Einstein condensates, incorporating correlation effects and stability analysis.
Contact
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