Eric Persoon and Engel Hoefgeest

It was a so-called "eye-opener" for most of us. We saw eyes opened at the many demonstrations and also at the eye patterns that appeared on the scope when sending data at 1 Gbps over a fibre.

How did it all start? On 13 February 2008, a lecture was organised at the Philips Campus in Eindhoven titled : 'Mobile Phones, the big turn is coming'. That was about the future architecture of the mobile phone. There it was told that the architecture will change to a distributed architecture, consisting of specialised building blocks. A very important part of this architecture is an interconnect network that is capable of working at high data rates, consumes little power and is suitable for integration into a phone.
At this lecture, Mr W. Rietveld of Tyco Electronics was also present and, after talking to him, it became clear that he was very interested in this and also had the necessary technology in house. This immediately piqued our interest and resulted in the visit to Tyco Electronics on 6 November 2008.
We received more applications than we could accommodate. So there was great interest from KIVI NIRIA members in this visit.

We were received on 6 November 2008 in the meeting room of Tyco Electronics and the reception was very well taken care of. The afternoon consisted of a general talk about the company with particular emphasis on the optical components manufactured by Tyco Electronics.
This was followed by two lectures on specific projects :

  • an optical high-speed cable for computer data centres, and
  • an optical connection for use in mobile phones.

Both very interesting. Also because a pilot production of the optical cable for mobile phones was shown afterwards.
Besides this demonstration, all kinds of optical measuring instruments were demonstrated in the test laboratory.
The lectures and demonstrations were given with great enthusiasm and showed us that Tyco Electronics' engineers enjoy working on their high-tech. There was a lot of interaction and many questions were asked and answered . It was a very successful company visit for everyone.
At the end, we also received the presentations on a USB stick. We hadn't experienced that before either.

Description

With a history of more than 50 years, Tyco Electronics, with sales of US$13.5 billion, is a global supplier of electronic components, network solutions and systems for telecommunications and industrial markets, wireless systems for communications and defence applications. The former AMP factory in 's Hertogenbosch is now part of the Tyco Electronics group and develops, among other things, components and systems for fibre-optic applications, both in networks and application-specific topics.

During this company visit, an introduction in particular will discuss in detail the latest market developments in the field of optical communications, both in network systems and in local applications, and the requirements for the components needed for this. A picture of the status of current technologies and future expectations for them will then be presented.

Location

Tyco Electronics Netherlands b.v.

Rietveldenweg 32, 's Hertogenbosch

Organiser

Elektrotechniek

Name and contact details for information

Information from ir. Engel Hoefgeest, t: (040) 25 35 392.