The Royal Institution for the Advancement of Learning/McGill University

Published purpose

ptical fiber communications power our connected world and support the highbandwidth connectivity required by personal and business demands for cloudbased storage and services, social media services, 8K video streaming, and machine-to-machine applications. Optical access networks will play an increasing role in supporting broadband services by providing seemingly unlimited capacity, lower latency, greater reliability, and enhanced security; they will also play an important role in mobile communications (e.g., 5G/6G) to support large bandwidth, broad coverage, and low latency. Significant efforts are directed at developing technologies for optical networking for convergence and access, and to address the challenges associated with increasing throughput, reducing power consumption, and simplifying network design, deployment, and operation. This project will demonstrate transceiver architectures and corresponding DSP algorithms that are cost effective and can be commercialized for use in both wireline, e.g., passive optical networks, and wireless, e.g., 5G backhaul, access networks with an emphasis on meeting the reach requirements for remote and underserved communities.