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Lightwave
Communication: Meeting the Demand of the Information Society
2000-10-19
Tingye
Li
Boulder, Colorado
AT&T Labs- Research (Retired)
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Optical
fiber transmission, with its unmatched attributes of vast bandwidth,
graceful growth, flexible architecture, high reliability, and cost-effective
deployment for information transport and distribution, has revolutionized
telecommunications. Indeed, lightwave communications has greatly hastened
the coming of the information age. |
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Recent
advances in optical amplifiers and wavelength-division-multiplexing
(WDM) technologies have led to a transformation in the telecommunications
industry that is unprecedented in magnitude and scope. Through the
deployment of amplified WDM lightwave transmission, telecommunications
network and service providers are able to build networks with capacities
that approach one terabit per second per fiber pair, which are more
than two orders of magnitude greater than what has been available,
and more than enough to meet the present traffic demand due to the
explosive growth of data and internet services. Further advancements
in photonic and optoelectronic technologies will enable networking
functions to be performed in the optical layer, thus affording a degree
of flexibility, scalability, reliability and cost-effectiveness that
will satisfy the needs of the information society for many years to
come. |
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This
talk will describe the historical development of lightwave communications,
consider the impact of the explosive growth of data and internet
services, present the recent advances in WDM technologies and systems,
and discuss how amplified WDM transmission and optical networking
will meet the demand of the information society for some time to
come.
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Biography:
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Tingye Li retired from AT&T on December 1, 1998. Until then, he has been a Division Manager in the Communications Infrastructure Research Laboratory of AT&T Laboratories at Red Bank, New Jersey. He is now an independent consultant in the field of lightwave communications. Since joining AT&T Bell Laboratories in 1957, he has worked in the areas of antennas, microwave propagation, lasers and optical communications, in which he has contributed more than 100 journal papers, patents, books and book chapters. His early work on laser resonator modes established the basis for the understanding of laser operation. Since the late 1960s, he and his groups have been engaged in pioneering research on lightwave technologies and systems, which are now ubiquitously deployed in all arenas of telecommunications. His latest work with his colleagues on amplified wavelength-division-multiplexed transmission systems, which they were the first to advocate for upgrading the transmission capacity of long-distance telecommunications networks, has revolutionized lightwave communications.
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