Optical beams – the next breakthrough in broadband wireless communication

The telecom section of the Royal Engineering Society invites you for the following webinar:

"Optical beams – the next breakthrough in broadband wireless communication".

The aim of this Telecom webinar is to present the latest position of developments by Mr. Prof Ton Koonen with the important developments are integrated into the new generation of optical networks.

The presentation and the slides will be in English.

Speaker:

Prof. Dr. ir. Ton Koonen – emeritus professor, Eindhoven University of Technology, dept. of Electrical Engineering, Electro-Optical Communication Systems group

Abstract:

The fast-growing demand for wireless delivery of broadband services is exhausting the capabilities of radio-based communication technologies. Like in wired connections, also in wireless connectivity there is a huge yet largely unexploited potential in optical communication technologies.

By means of carefully steered narrow infrared beams, high capacity individual links to users at high user densities can be created. A concise overview will be given of the key technologies for the beam steering, user localization and beam reception, as well as of the architecture of indoor broadband optical wireless systems and experimental testbed results. The applications will be discussed, and the capabilities compared with those of radio-based wireless indoor systems. Finally, an outlook on further progress is given.

Biography:

Ton Koonen worked from 1979 until 2000 in applied research, at Philips’ Telecommunication Industry, and at Bell Laboratories, AT&T Network Systems, later Lucent Technologies. From 1993 to 2000 he also was a part-time professor at University of Twente. From 2001 to Feb. 2021, Ton was full-time professor of Broadband Communication Systems (in particular optical communication systems) at Eindhoven Univ. of Technology, from 2004 chairman of the group Electro-Optical Communication Systems, and in 2012-2020 also vice-dean for research of the department of Electrical Engineering.

Ton is a Bell Labs Fellow (the first in Europe), IEEE Fellow, OPTICA (formerly OSA) Fellow, and was appointed ‘Ridder in de Orde van de Nederlandse Leeuw’ in 2021. He received an Advanced Investigator Grant in 2012, the most prestigious personal grant of the European Research Council, for research on optical wireless communication techniques.

Ton (co-)authored more than 750 journal and conference papers, and filed 13 patents. His research interests include optical fiber communication networks, fibre-to-the-home, indoor networks, spatial division multiplexing, radio-over-fiber techniques, and most recently optical wireless communication.

Moderator

Sonia Heeemstra

Sonia Heemstra’s background combines academic and industrial research as well as entrepreneurship. She graduated as an electrical engineer at the Universidad National de Mar del Plata, in Argentina. Shortly after, she came to The Netherlands and obtained a second MSc from the Philips International Institute/NUFFIC. Later, Sonia moved to the Electrical Engineering Department of University of Twente, where she obtained her PhD in 1990. She subsequently held the positions of Assistant and Associate Professor at the University of Twente. Later, she held a Full Professor position in Personal and Ambient Networking at Delft University of Technology. After having worked some years as a senior researcher at Ericsson EuroLab, The Netherlands, Sonia co-founded the Twente Institute for Wireless and Mobile, where she has been Chief Scientist from 2003 to 2014. 

Since 2012, Sonia has been a Full Professor at TU/e where she holds the chair in Heterogeneous Network Architectures. In 2016, she became the director of the Centre for Wireless Technology Eindhoven (CWTe). She has managed, coordinated and participated in many national and European research projects. Sonia is or has been a member of several national and European scientific committees and advisory boards, such as ENISA (European Network and Information Agency), Innovatie Platform Duurzame ICT, Netherlands Academy of Technology and Innovation (AcTI-nl),  Scientific and Technical Council (WTR) of the Dutch SURF Foundation, IFIP TC-6 Working Group, IST Advisory Board - European Security & Dependability Task Force: for the IST 7FP. She has authored or co-authored more than 250 papers published in international journals or presented at international conferences and is co-author of two books.

Links

Optical wireless communications (OWC) is a form of optical communication in which unguided visible, infrared (IR), or ultraviolet (UV) light is used to carry a signal. It is generally used in short-range communication. OWC systems operating in the visible band (390–750 nm) are commonly referred to as visible light communication (VLC). See further:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_wireless_communications

Most of the information on the internet is about LiFi and visible light communication, Ton's work is about infrared OWC. To see in a film with an interview in NOS in which Bart Smolders and Ton talk about the new generation of mobile communication and in particular infrared OWC.

https://www.nos.nl/pid-7108/NOS%20Journaal%20200522-3.mp4

https://www.tue.nl/en/news-and-events/news-overview/03-06-2020-the-modern-world-is-fast-becoming-a-wireless-infrared-world

The following short article from the April 2017 issue of MediaMarkt magazine shows the market potential of the optical beams technology:

See also the former seminar: KIVI Telecom Recent Advance in optical communications on October 30, 2021

We like to meet you at the webinar.