MRI: Acquisition of equipment for high speed optical communications research and education at College of Staten Island

Cuny College Of Staten Island, Staten Island NY

Investigators

Abstract

Research Objectives and Approaches The objective of this research is to study advanced communication technologies, parallel computation techniques and model arbitrary signal generation and detection using a versatile, programmable experimental platform that will be assembled using the obtained equipment. The approach is to integrate this platform with an existing high-performance computer to automatically generate, detect and process high-speed, multi-level optical signals. This can be programmed to experimentally study the performance of high spectrally-efficient optical signals and support the study of real-time high-speed data analysis. Intellectual Merit The experimental platform offers the novel capability of flexible software-controlled reconfiguration of a single experimental setup to perform comprehensive performance evaluations of arbitrary modulation formats for different network applications and to study key aspects of adaptive electronic compensation schemes. It takes advantage of the high performance computing engine to provide massive parallel digital signal processing capability and reduce the required time for data processing by replacing offline processing, which is currently used by most high-speed experiments, with real-time online processing. It thus enables research on high speed communications (beyond 100Gbps) with complex modulation formats, improved performance and on a variety of optical system application spaces. Broader Impacts The proposed work will strengthen our student?s exposure to graduate and undergraduate research here on Staten Island as well as improve their interactions with the high-tech industry. It will also bring together students and faculty within the City University of NY to study multidisciplinary problems and enable recruitment of underrepresented minorities and/or women students.