RESEARCH Optical System

Area Leader Prof. Ernesto Ciaramella

This research area is concerned with innovative solutions for optical systems and subsystems. It covers Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM), which is the most recently introduced transmission technique by means of experimental tests and numerical simulations. A high-capacity WDM 40 Gbit/s system test-bed is used for transmission experiments. The main research topics are:

• high capacity transmission systems: the area demonstrated various improvements of current system architectures and of new alternative modulation formats; it coordinated the 1st ever field trial of SOA-based long reach WDM-DPSK system;
• all-optical devices: the research area has introduced and demonstrated a number of optical processing circuits for all optical regeneration, clock recovery and label processing
• optical systems for access network and last-mile solutions: new solutions are currently being investigated on WDM PON access, mostly related to signal remodulation, and radio over fiber; the area also took part into a world-record experiment of free-space optic transmission (1.28 Terabit/s).

This research area is also directly related to the R&D activities of Ericsson Lab, in Pisa, since Ericsson is one of the main worldwide suppliers of WDM systems. A number of patents were jointly developed with Ericsson in this field.