Internet innovation
Liang Du
A Monash postgraduate candidate has taken out a prestigious student competition for his groundbreaking research on increasing long-haul internet connection speeds.
Liang Du, currently undertaking his PhD in Electrical and Computer Systems Engineering, was awarded the 2011 Corning Outstanding Student Paper Competition at the Optical Fiber Communication Conference and Exposition / National Fiber Optical Engineering Conference (OFC/NFOEC) held recently in Los Angeles.
There were more than 380 entries in the competition, which recognises innovation, research excellence, and presentation abilities in optical communications.
Liang’s research focuses on ways to increase the capacity of optical links by mitigating a problem know as the nonlinearity of optical fibres.
“Everyone in this modern world wants to be connected. However, many people are unaware that almost all of the world’s long-haul (hundreds of kilometres) telecommunications traffic is carried by optical fibre. As new technologies increase the connection speeds to people’s homes, connection speeds of long-haul systems must also increase,” Liang said.
“However, the nonlinearity of optical fibre means that optical signal powers must be kept low, preventing the capacity of optical links to be increased simply by increasing the signal power.”
“We recently proposed a method of compensating for the fibre nonlinearity, which can increase both the speed and reach of long-haul systems, enabling a faster, more efficient network. At the conference, we presented an experimental demonstration of how our proposed method can help increase the capacity of optical links,” said Liang.
OFC/NFOEC, with around 10,000 attendees, is the largest global conference and exposition for optical communications and networking professionals. The conference attracts expert researchers in the field, offers key networking and partnering opportunities and provides insights and inspiration on major trends in the industry.
For more information on the conference, visit the OFC/NFOEC website.