Takis Hadjifotiou, FREng, FIEE, CEng
"The Evolution of Optical Communications"
Wednesday March 29th, 4:00 pm,
Room DB114 David Brewster Building, Heriot Watt University
Abstract
During the last twenty years the staggering success of optical fibre communications has enabled people to communicate widely across the world as never before. In spite of the recent economic difficulties the sector in experiencing the underlying growth in optical fibre communications is strong and will stabilise.
When fibre optical communications were introduced the network was based on copper transmission systems for both long haul (coaxial) and access (twisted pairs) and the fibres were effectively grafted on the existing network infrastructure. This approach did not take into account the salient features of optical transmission except capacity and link length. As the state of the art in fibre communications advanced in terms of components and systems it became clear that they could change completely the fabric of the network and provide a multiplicity of services to satisfy the demand of the broad band multi-media environment of the future.
The purpose of this talk is to outline the current trends in optical networks and introduce the technologies that will enable the implementation of future optical networks.
The talk begins with the current network trends that are shaped in a multimedia environment with broadband requirements and the expectations they impose on future technologies in the context of an all optical network. The future enabling technologies will be outlined with emphasis on optical technology and optical and electronic signal processing. The talk will close with some state of the and information on the enabling technologies.
Page last updated by Graham Turnbull: 27 March 2006