{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,6,15]],"date-time":"2026-06-15T14:13:05Z","timestamp":1781532785439,"version":"3.54.5"},"reference-count":45,"publisher":"Optica Publishing Group","issue":"5","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2026,4,13]],"date-time":"2026-04-13T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1776038400000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1364\/OA_License_v2#VOR"},{"start":{"date-parts":[[2026,4,13]],"date-time":"2026-04-13T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1776038400000},"content-version":"tdm","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/opg.optica.org\/policies\/opg-tdm-policy.json"}],"funder":[{"name":"Shanghai Pilot Program for Basic Research -Shanghai Jiao Tong University","award":["21TQ1400213"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["21TQ1400213"]}]},{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100001809","name":"National Natural Science Foundation of China","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["62175145"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["62175145"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100001809","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":["opg.optica.org"],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["J. Opt. Commun. Netw."],"published-print":{"date-parts":[[2026,5,1]]},"abstract":"<jats:p>Recent advancements in large language models (LLMs) have enabled the development of AI agents capable of complex problem-solving and autonomous operations. This work demonstrates the first, to our knowledge, field trial of an LLM-powered AI agent for autonomous optical networks (AONs). The AI agent addresses challenges in managing complex optical network lifecycles. Three operational modes\u2014LLM-native, LLM-centric, and rule-centric\u2014are proposed to enable the management of multiple typical events during the optical network lifecycle. Demonstrated on a 440\u00a0km field trial testbed, the AI agent shows advanced capabilities such as wavelength add\/drop, soft\/hard failure management, and optical power optimization. Comparative analysis highlights LLMs\u2019 potential in advancing AON operations, showcasing their role in achieving intelligent, efficient, and autonomous optical network management.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1364\/jocn.575402","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,3,9]],"date-time":"2026-03-09T13:00:09Z","timestamp":1773061209000},"page":"A179","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1364\/crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["Field trial of an LLM-powered AI agent for autonomous optical networks: a full-lifecycle demonstration"],"prefix":"10.1364","volume":"18","author":[{"given":"Xiaomin","family":"Liu","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"id":[{"id":"https:\/\/ror.org\/0220qvk04","id-type":"ROR","asserted-by":"publisher"}]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0009-0003-2161-9945","authenticated-orcid":true,"given":"Yihao","family":"Zhang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"id":[{"id":"https:\/\/ror.org\/0220qvk04","id-type":"ROR","asserted-by":"publisher"}]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0009-0001-4800-6474","authenticated-orcid":true,"given":"Qizhi","family":"Qiu","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"id":[{"id":"https:\/\/ror.org\/0220qvk04","id-type":"ROR","asserted-by":"publisher"}]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Yuming","family":"Cheng","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"id":[{"id":"https:\/\/ror.org\/0220qvk04","id-type":"ROR","asserted-by":"publisher"}]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-6168-2688","authenticated-orcid":true,"given":"Weisheng","family":"Hu","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"id":[{"id":"https:\/\/ror.org\/0220qvk04","id-type":"ROR","asserted-by":"publisher"}]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-2437-0220","authenticated-orcid":true,"given":"Qunbi","family":"Zhuge","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"id":[{"id":"https:\/\/ror.org\/0220qvk04","id-type":"ROR","asserted-by":"publisher"}]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"285","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2026,4,13]]},"reference":[{"key":"jocn-18-5-A179-R1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","author":"Huang","year":"2024","DOI":"10.48550\/arXiv.2402.02716","type":"preprint"},{"key":"jocn-18-5-A179-R2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"570","DOI":"10.1038\/s41586-023-06792-0","type":"journal-article","volume":"624","author":"Boiko","year":"2023","journal-title":"Nature"},{"key":"jocn-18-5-A179-R3","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","author":"Bran","year":"2023","DOI":"10.48550\/arXiv.2304.05376","type":"preprint"},{"key":"jocn-18-5-A179-R4","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","author":"Mei","year":"2025","DOI":"10.48550\/arXiv.2403.16971","type":"preprint"},{"key":"jocn-18-5-A179-R5","first-page":"172","article-title":"Using GitHub Copilot to solve simple programming problems","volume-title":"Proceedings of the 54th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education","volume":"1","author":"Wermelinger","year":"2023"},{"key":"jocn-18-5-A179-R7","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","year":"2024","DOI":"10.48550\/arXiv.2303.08774","type":"preprint"},{"key":"jocn-18-5-A179-R9","first-page":"M1","article-title":"Autonomous closed-loop operations to ensure QoT connections in SDN-controlled elastic optical networks","volume-title":"Optical Fiber Communication Conference (OFC)","author":"Mart\u00ednez","year":"2025"},{"key":"jocn-18-5-A179-R10","first-page":"F3","article-title":"BOW: first real-world demonstration of a Bayesian optimization system for wavelength reconfiguration","volume-title":"Optical Fiber Communication Conference (OFC)","author":"Zhong","year":"2021"},{"key":"jocn-18-5-A179-R11","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"1151","DOI":"10.1109\/JLT.2023.3328783","type":"journal-article","volume":"42","author":"Chen","year":"2024","journal-title":"J. Lightwave Technol."},{"key":"jocn-18-5-A179-R12","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"5105","DOI":"10.1109\/JLT.2017.2743461","type":"journal-article","volume":"35","author":"Soumplis","year":"2017","journal-title":"J. Lightwave Technol."},{"key":"jocn-18-5-A179-R13","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"A9","DOI":"10.1364\/JOCN.9.0000A9","type":"journal-article","volume":"9","author":"Pointurier","year":"2017","journal-title":"J. Opt. Commun. Netw."},{"key":"jocn-18-5-A179-R14","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"1698","DOI":"10.1109\/JLT.2018.2881840","type":"journal-article","volume":"37","author":"Delezoide","year":"2019","journal-title":"J. Lightwave Technol."},{"key":"jocn-18-5-A179-R15","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"3212","DOI":"10.1109\/JLT.2016.2569073","type":"journal-article","volume":"34","author":"Roberts","year":"2016","journal-title":"J. Lightwave Technol."},{"key":"jocn-18-5-A179-R16","first-page":"We1A.4","article-title":"Spectral power profile optimization of field-deployed WDM network by remote link modeling","volume-title":"European Conference on Optical Communication (ECOC)","author":"Jones","year":"2022"},{"key":"jocn-18-5-A179-R17","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"23229","DOI":"10.1364\/OE.493185","type":"journal-article","volume":"31","author":"Fan","year":"2023","journal-title":"Opt. Express"},{"key":"jocn-18-5-A179-R18","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"C20","DOI":"10.1364\/JOCN.482298","type":"journal-article","volume":"15","author":"Yang","year":"2023","journal-title":"J. Opt. Commun. Netw."},{"key":"jocn-18-5-A179-R19","first-page":"Th1A.2","article-title":"First field trial of LLM-powered AI agent for lifecycle management of autonomous driving optical networks","volume-title":"Optical Fiber Communication Conference (OFC)","author":"Liu","year":"2025"},{"key":"jocn-18-5-A179-R20","first-page":"404","article-title":"Soft failure identification in optical networks based on convolutional neural network","volume-title":"European Conference on Optical Communication (ECOC)","author":"Lun","year":"2019"},{"key":"jocn-18-5-A179-R21","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"4125","DOI":"10.1109\/JLT.2019.2922586","type":"journal-article","volume":"37","author":"Musumeci","year":"2019","journal-title":"J. Lightwave Technol."},{"key":"jocn-18-5-A179-R22","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"4514","DOI":"10.1109\/JLT.2022.3170278","type":"journal-article","volume":"40","author":"Mayer","year":"2022","journal-title":"J. Lightwave Technol."},{"key":"jocn-18-5-A179-R23","first-page":"2140","article-title":"Modeling soft-failure evolution for triggering timely repair with low QoT margins","volume-title":"IEEE Global Communications Conference (GLOBECOM)","author":"Behera","year":"2022"},{"key":"jocn-18-5-A179-R24","first-page":"Th1G.4","article-title":"GPT-enabled digital twin assistant for multi-task cooperative management in autonomous optical network","volume-title":"Optical Fiber Communication Conference (OFC)","author":"Zhang","year":"2024"},{"key":"jocn-18-5-A179-R25","first-page":"34","article-title":"AlarmGPT: an intelligent operation assistant for optical network alarm analysis using ChatGPT","volume-title":"European Conference on Optical Communication (ECOC)","author":"Wang","year":"2023"},{"key":"jocn-18-5-A179-R26","first-page":"1591","article-title":"Open implementation of a large language model pipeline for automated configuration of software-defined optical networks","volume-title":"European Conference on Optical Communication","author":"Di Cicco","year":"2024"},{"key":"jocn-18-5-A179-R27","first-page":"M3","article-title":"LLM-centric transport network configuration management framework and demonstration","volume-title":"Optical Fiber Communication Conference (OFC)","author":"Wang","year":"2025"},{"key":"jocn-18-5-A179-R28","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"20776","DOI":"10.1364\/OE.522026","type":"journal-article","volume":"32","author":"Jiang","year":"2024","journal-title":"Opt. Express"},{"key":"jocn-18-5-A179-R29","first-page":"Tu.04.06.3","article-title":"Expertise-guided LLM agent realizing autonomous optical power optimization in field-deployed networks","volume-title":"European Conference on Optical Communication (ECOC)","author":"Qiu","year":"2025"},{"key":"jocn-18-5-A179-R30","first-page":"W.02.01.170","article-title":"OptiMA: collaborative multi-agent framework for modelling and controlling Raman amplifier in intelligent optical networks","volume-title":"European Conference on Optical Communication (ECOC)","author":"Xiang","year":"2025"},{"key":"jocn-18-5-A179-R31","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"C82","DOI":"10.1364\/JOCN.550286","type":"journal-article","volume":"17","author":"Sun","year":"2025","journal-title":"J. Opt. Commun. Netw."},{"key":"jocn-18-5-A179-R32","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","author":"Yao","year":"2023","DOI":"10.48550\/arXiv.2210.03629","type":"preprint"},{"key":"jocn-18-5-A179-R33","first-page":"9459","article-title":"Retrieval-augmented generation for knowledge-intensive NLP tasks","volume-title":"Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS)","volume":"33","author":"Lewis","year":"2020"},{"key":"jocn-18-5-A179-R34","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"1050","DOI":"10.59287\/icaens.1127","type":"journal-article","volume":"1","author":"Topsakal","year":"2023","journal-title":"Int. Conf. Appl. Eng. Nat. Sci."},{"key":"jocn-18-5-A179-R37","first-page":"Th1G.5","article-title":"Auto-DTWave: digital twin-aided autonomous optical network operation with continuous wavelength loading","volume-title":"Optical Fiber Communications Conference (OFC)","author":"Liu","year":"2024"},{"key":"jocn-18-5-A179-R38","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","DOI":"10.1007\/978-3-030-01219-9_9","article-title":"Memory aware synapses: learning what (not) to forget","volume-title":"Computer Vision\u2014ECCV","author":"Aljundi","year":"2018"},{"key":"jocn-18-5-A179-R39","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"1975","DOI":"10.1002\/qre.1924","type":"journal-article","volume":"32","author":"Viana","year":"2016","journal-title":"Qual. Reliab. Eng. Int."},{"key":"jocn-18-5-A179-R40","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"3857","DOI":"10.1109\/JLT.2012.2217729","type":"journal-article","volume":"30","author":"Poggiolini","year":"2012","journal-title":"J. Lightwave Technol."},{"key":"jocn-18-5-A179-R41","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"694","DOI":"10.1109\/JLT.2013.2295208","type":"journal-article","volume":"32","author":"Poggiolini","year":"2014","journal-title":"J. Lightwave Technol."},{"key":"jocn-18-5-A179-R42","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"459","DOI":"10.1109\/JLT.2014.2387891","type":"journal-article","volume":"33","author":"Poggiolini","year":"2015","journal-title":"J. Lightwave Technol."},{"key":"jocn-18-5-A179-R44","unstructured":"\u201c Chroma ,\u201d GitHub , https:\/\/github.com\/chroma-core\/chroma ."},{"key":"jocn-18-5-A179-R45","unstructured":"Nogueir F. , \u201c Bayesian optimization: a Python implementation of global optimization with gaussian processes ,\u201d GitHub ( 2014 ), https:\/\/github.com\/bayesian-optimization\/BayesianOptimization ."},{"key":"jocn-18-5-A179-R46","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"507","DOI":"10.1007\/s10898-020-00923-x","type":"journal-article","volume":"78","author":"Zhan","year":"2020","journal-title":"J. Glob. Optim."},{"key":"jocn-18-5-A179-R47","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"431","DOI":"10.1108\/02644400210430190","type":"journal-article","volume":"19","author":"Stander","year":"2002","journal-title":"Eng. Comput."},{"key":"jocn-18-5-A179-R49","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","year":"2025","DOI":"10.48550\/arXiv.2312.11805","type":"preprint"},{"key":"jocn-18-5-A179-R50","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","author":"Touvron","year":"2023","DOI":"10.48550\/arXiv.2302.13971","type":"preprint"},{"key":"jocn-18-5-A179-R51","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","author":"Sahoo","year":"2024","DOI":"10.48550\/arXiv.2402.07927","type":"preprint"}],"container-title":["Journal of Optical Communications and Networking"],"original-title":[],"language":"en","link":[{"URL":"https:\/\/opg.optica.org\/viewmedia.cfm?URI=jocn-18-5-A179&seq=0","content-type":"unspecified","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"similarity-checking"}],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2026,5,13]],"date-time":"2026-05-13T13:59:22Z","timestamp":1778680762000},"score":1,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/opg.optica.org\/abstract.cfm?URI=jocn-18-5-A179"}},"subtitle":[],"short-title":[],"issued":{"date-parts":[[2026,4,13]]},"references-count":45,"journal-issue":{"issue":"5","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2026]]},"published-print":{"date-parts":[[2026]]}},"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1364\/jocn.575402","relation":{},"ISSN":["1943-0620","1943-0639"],"issn-type":[{"value":"1943-0620","type":"print"},{"value":"1943-0639","type":"electronic"}],"subject":[],"published":{"date-parts":[[2026,4,13]]},"assertion":[{"value":"Optica Publishing Group","name":"publisher","label":"This article is maintained by"},{"value":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1364\/JOCN.575402","name":"articlelink","label":"Crossref DOI link to publisher maintained version"},{"value":"research-article","name":"content_type","label":"Article type"},{"value":"Screened by Similarity Check","name":"cross_check","label":"Similarity check"},{"value":"Yes","order":0,"name":"peer_reviewed","label":"Peer reviewed","group":{"name":"peer_review","label":"Peer review"}},{"value":"Single blind","order":1,"name":"review_process","label":"Review process","group":{"name":"peer_review","label":"Peer review"}},{"value":"4 August 2025","order":0,"name":"received","label":"Received","group":{"name":"publication_history","label":"Publication History"}},{"value":"9 March 2026","order":1,"name":"accepted","label":"Accepted","group":{"name":"publication_history","label":"Publication History"}},{"value":"13 April 2026","order":2,"name":"published","label":"Published","group":{"name":"publication_history","label":"Publication History"}},{"value":"\u00a9 2026 Optica Publishing Group. All rights, including for text and data mining (TDM), Artificial Intelligence (AI) training, and similar technologies, are reserved.","name":"copyright","label":"Copyright"}]}}