Seminars will be held in the Lecture Theatre 1 - William Gates Building, Computer Laboratory at 4.15pm

	See also: Networks & OS seminars Security seminars Logic and Semantics seminars Additional meetings weekly timetable for other meetings

Ian White

Photonics - Where Should it be in the Network?

Progress in optical communications has historically succeeded in providing ever greater levels of communications capacity at continually reducing costs. Innovations have led to growing applications for photonics in datacommunication standards, such as the Ethernet standards. As data bit rates have increased, demands on the physical layer have become exacting. This has been primarily found in respect of the limits on the available bandwidth of the transmission media, the laser sources used to generate the optical signals, the receiver performance levels and the performance of low cost electronics. Following a review of the current work of the Centre for Photonics Communications, which is now partly based in the William Gates Building, this seminar will address photonic, electronic and coding strategies now being employed to enhance further link performance. For example, low cost multimode fibre links using both wavelength division and subcarrier multiplexing techniques providing 200 Gb/s data rates, and new low cost high speed (10 Gb/s and greater) components will be discussed. A special reference will be given to the UK PHOTON project which has been active in this area, and also to the impact that new link technologies are likely to have on new routing and switching systems. The talk will focus on potential future trends for higher bit rate systems likely to be required in future standards implementations, and new areas of application for photonics in fixed and wireless computer networks.