Fiber-Optic Communication and Information Theory

The Focus Group for Fiber-Optic Communication and Information Theory aimed to develop an understanding of, and solutions for, the looming capacity bottleneck in the global fiber network that carries the world's data traffic. Traffic demand is growing at an exponential rate and can be met only with a corresponding growth in the optical network capacity. An alarming recent observation is that the capacity limits of standard single-mode fiber, the fiber used for most deployments, is being rapidly approached. New ideas are therefore needed to ensure that capacity grows at least as fast as demand. The success of the project depends on an interdisciplinary understanding of the capacity issues. For example, we need to understand the energy and cost issues associated with lighting more fiber, to develop mathematical models for new fiber, to understand the fiber capacity based on the new models, and to develop optimal receiver processing methods and algorithms.

The group leaders were:

Prof. Gerhard Kramer of TUM is Alexander von Humboldt Professor and Head of the Institute for Communications Engineering. He is acting as host of the Focus Group. In the context of the TUM-IAS Focus Group, he aims to bring together the world's leading researchers working on the boundary of communications engineering and optical physics. He is an expert on information theory and gained experience on fiber-optic communications as a member of technical staff at Bell Labs in Murray Hill, NJ.

Prof. Frank Kschischang of the University of Toronto is an Alumnus Hans Fischer Senior Fellow at the TUM-IAS. He is an expert on information theory and coding theory, with extensive experience working on the capacity of different types of fiber models, and on the design of error-control codes for fiber networks.

Dr. René-Jean Essiambre of Bell Labs, Alcatel-Lucent is a Rudolf Diesel Industry Fellow at the TUM-IAS. He is an expert on nonlinear processes in optical fibers, on sources of noise in optical transmission and on the design of advanced optical fiber systems. He is considered a world leader in finding schemes to maximize transmission of information over fibers and on determining its ultimate capacity.

Postdocs:
Luca Barletta, Institute for Communications Engineering
Mansoor Isvand Yousefi, Institute for Communications Engineering