The department performs research and development on optoelectronic components, architectures, protocols and complete systems for optical networks that use wavelength division multiplexing (WDM). Our purpose is to open up as much of the full potential as we can of all the optical fiber being installed worldwide, currently underused by a factor of ten thousand in bandwidth.
The bandwidth available in the low-attenuation passband within a standard single-mode optical fiber is 25000 GHz. Typical time-division multiplexed systems are limited in their exploitation of this bandwidth for communication by electronic speeds, which currently allow transmission at bit trates of up to a few Gb/s total. WDM systems get around this limitation by using multiple frequency or wavelength channels in this bandwidth. The channels are spaced typically 1 nm apart in wavelength (120 GHz apart in frequency) in the 1.5 micron passband of the fiber. Each channel can be used to transmit data at the few Gb/s afforded by electronic speeds, allowing us to realize networks of extremely large capacities.
Here are some particulars of our work:
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