MODE-GAP, the European collaborative R&D project funded under the European Commission’s 7th Framework Programme, which aims to provide Europe with a lead in the development of the next generation internet infrastructure, is to present its latest results with thirteen papers at this month’s OFC conference and exhibition (17-21 March). The project, which is investigating a possible solution to the capacity crunch by using multimode fibres to increase the transmission capacity, consists of key European organisations drawn from industry and academia.

Key members will start by presenting two papers on the first day of the conference under the workshop ‘Is the Technology There for SDM?’. The papers titled; ‘Few-mode Fibres for Space Division Multiplexing’ and ‘MM Amplifier: What are the Design Challenges for Fibres Supporting Increasing Number of Guided Modes?’ will provide insight into the advances of the project so far.

Dr Ian Giles, Project Manager of MODE-GAP said: “The work of the MODE-GAP project is critical as the current rate of increased demand for bandwidth limits will potentially be reached within the next 10 years. We’re using Spatial Division Multiplexing to increase the capacity of a single mode fibre and the project has already made excellent progress. It has achieved the world leading result for multi-channel transmission, the first multimode amplifiers have been shown and utilised, and the first 2um Wavelength Division Multiplexing system and PBGF multimode transmission has been shown.”

Other papers being presented by MODE-GAP at OFC are:

    OM3I.5. Robust Low Loss Splicing of Hollow Core Photonic Bandgap Fibre to Itself

    OTu3G.2. Vector Mode effects in Few Moded Erbium Doped Fibre Amplifiers

    OTu3G. 3. Design of Four-Mode Erbium Doped Fibre Amplifier with Low Differential Modal Gain for Modal Division Multiplexed Transmissions

    OW1K.3. Measurement of Spatial and Polarization Birefringence in Two-Mode Elliptical Core Fibres

    OW1I.5. “30.7 Tb/s (96x320 Gb/s) DP-32QAM transmission over 19-cell Photonic Band Gap Fibre”

    OW1I.6. WDM Transmission at 2μm over Low-Loss Hollow Core Photonic Bandgap Fibre

    JW2A.24. Multimode EDFA performance in mode-division multiplexed transmission systems

    OW4F.4. Low Computational Complexity Mode Division Multiplexed OFDM Transmission over 130 km of Few Mode Fibre

    OTh1J.1. Predicting Structural and Optical Properties of Hollow-Core Photonic Bandgap Fibres from Second Stage Preforms

    OTh4C.1. Thulium-doped Fibre Amplifier for Optical Communications at 2µm

    OTh1J.3. Development of Low Loss, Wide Bandwidth Hollow Core Photonic Bandgap Fibres

Organisations comprising MODE-GAP include the University of Southampton’s Optoelectronics Research Centre, the University of Aston’s Institute of Photonic Technologies, ESPCI ParisTech, OFS Fitel Denmark APS, Phoenix Photonics, the COBRA Institute at Technische Universiteit Eindhoven, Eblana Photonics Ltd, Nokia Siemens Networks GMBH & Co. KG and the Tyndall National Institute of University College Cork. Half-way through a four year programme, MODE-GAP’s mission is to develop transmission technologies based on specialist long-haul transmission fibres, and associated enabling technologies. These include novel rare-earth doped optical amplifiers, transmitter and receiver components and data processing techniques to increase the capacity of broadband networks.

Dr. Ian Giles, Project Manager of MODE-GAP and CEO of Phoenix Photonics will be available for interview at booth 1710 in the OFC Exhibition from 19-21 March, Anaheim Convention Center, Anaheim, CA, USA.

For further information visit http://modegap.eu/. If you would like to arrange an interview with Dr. Ian Giles, please contact Emma Johnson on +44(0)1636 812152 or by email to [email protected].

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