Federated Learning-Based Anomaly Detection for Secure and Reliable Optical Data Center Infrastructure
Keywords:
federated learning; anomaly detection; optical data centers; secure aggregation; optical performance monitoring; data center reliability; artificial intelligence governance; sustainabilityAbstract
Optical data center infrastructure is becoming increasingly central to cloud computing, artificial intelligence training, high-performance computing, and latency-sensitive digital services. As data centers scale in port count, wavelength density, switching complexity, and geographic distribution, the task of detecting anomalies that threaten reliability and security becomes more difficult. Centralized anomaly detection architectures struggle with data movement costs, privacy constraints, multi-tenant governance, and the need for low-latency responses across heterogeneous optical domains. This paper examines federated learning as a system-level approach for anomaly detection in optical data center infrastructure. It analyzes how decentralized model training can support secure and reliable operations across racks, pods, fabrics, and interconnected facilities while respecting domain boundaries and reducing raw telemetry centralization. The discussion focuses on architectural trade-offs, including communication overhead, non-identically distributed telemetry, secure aggregation, model provenance, fault isolation, and explainability. It also considers the physical-layer realities of optical networks, including wavelength switching, clock synchronization, hollow-core fiber, optical performance monitoring, and programmable photonic components, all of which shape the anomaly baselines that learning systems must interpret. The paper further evaluates governance, fairness, sustainability, and policy implications, arguing that federated anomaly detection should be understood not merely as a machine learning deployment pattern but as a socio-technical control mechanism for critical infrastructure. It concludes that reliable optical data centers require hybrid architectures that combine local autonomy, hierarchical coordination, cryptographic trust, and human oversight, while avoiding excessive centralization or unmanaged federation.
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This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.