As microprocessors continue to decrease in size and increase in performance, in accordance with Moore's Law, we are starting to reach the limits of copper wire. In particular, with the increasing load on copper interconnects, we are approaching the limit on bit rates and beginning to face problems of heat dissipation and growing interference between channels.

We believe that optical interconnects are a potential solution to some of these problems. The use of photonics could substantially increase the rate of data transmission while saving energy and reducing interference between channels.

We are the project lead for the UK's three-year OSDA (Optical Systems for the Digital Age) project, Smoothed Optical ATD packet switching (SOAPS), which will continue through the spring of 2006. This research focuses on integration and electronic control of optical components and multi-wavelength coding techniques to address cost and latency issues.

To increase data capacity, we're using a method called wavelength striping, whereby we separate data packets among many wavelengths, which increases the speed of data transfer. This ability to achieve higher bandwidth simultaneously with reduced delay is a major advantage of photonics.

We have developed a prototype testbed, in collaboration with the Centre for Photonic Systems, a group within the Engineering Department of the University of Cambridge. We have successfully experimented with moving data at 100 gigabytes per second across an optical interconnect-a bit rate that exceeds the capacity of copper.

What's particularly novel about our prototype optical network is that it's connected to real computers, so our tests use real traffic data. This contrasts with much optical network research, which uses simulated data.

Our tests have proven the feasibility of our wavelength striping technique. Now we are focusing on improving performance. That research includes exploring advanced coding techniques in collaboration with the Computer Lab of Cambridge University.

In collaboration with the Optical Networks Group, University College London we are investigating novel high speed digital signal processing techniques to improve the performance and lower the costs of WDM technology for short link interconnect applications.

Our research is being published in several key venues in 2005, and there has been a lot of interest in the research among the broader optical networking community. I think that's because we're doing some exciting work, and we're working with excellent research groups at University College London and the University of Cambridge. Our research has the potential to substantially improve the capacity of communications while lowering communication costs.

Madeleine Glick is co-author of several papers being published in two leading conferences in 2005. Two of the papers-one on the lab's testbed experiments and another on EDC research-were presented at the 2005 Optical Fiber Conference (OFC), which is the leading optical conference in the U.S. Three other papers will be presented at the 2005 European Conference on Optical Communication (ECOC), the major optical communication conference in Europe. Glick is also a member of the 2005 program committee for ECOC.

Glick also co-authored a paper which appeared in the Jan-Feb 2005 issue of IEEE Journal of Quantum Electronics and another that has been accepted for publication in IEEE Communications Magazine later in 2005. Finally, she is co-author of a paper published in the March 2005 issue of IEEE Photonics Technology Letters. Another article highlighting Glick's collaborative research with University College London and a product group within Intel has been accepted for later publication in the same journal.