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Lightwave Communications: A
Mainstay of the Information Society
2000-10-20Tingye Li
Boulder, Colorado
AT&T Labs- Research (Retired)
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Optical fiber transmission, with its unmatched attributes of vast
bandwidth, graceful growth, flexible architecture, high reliability, and
cost-effective deployment for information transport and distribution,
has revolutionized telecommunications. Indeed, lightwave communications
has greatly hastened the coming of the information age. |
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Research on optical-fiber transmission technologies began in the late
1960s. Progress was rapid and abundant, and by 1980 the first lightwave
transmission system was installed for commercial application. Now,
lightwave communications systems and networks are ubiquitously deployed
worldwide for transmission, routing, distribution, and delivery of
information, be it voice, video, data, internet, or multimedia. Undersea
optical fiber cables bridge continents; terrestrial fiber systems link
cities and interconnect switching centers in metropolitan areas; fiber
local access systems deliver broadband services to office buildings and
private homes. |
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This talk will describe the historical development and deployment of
lightwave communications, with special emphasis on the major role played
by Bell Labs, and discuss how amplified wavelength-division-multiplexed
(WDM) transmission and optical networking will meet the demand of the
information society for some time to come.
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Biography: |
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Tingye Li retired from AT&T on December 1, 1998. Until then, he has been
a Division Manager in the Communications Infrastructure Research
Laboratory of AT&T Laboratories at Red Bank, New Jersey. He is now an
independent consultant in the field of lightwave communications. Since
joining AT&T Bell Laboratories in 1957, he has worked in the areas of
antennas, microwave propagation, lasers and optical communications, in
which he has contributed more than 100 journal papers, patents, books
and book chapters. His early work on laser resonator modes established
the basis for the understanding of laser operation. Since the late
1960s, he and his groups have been engaged in pioneering research on
lightwave technologies and systems, which are now ubiquitously deployed
in all arenas of telecommunications. His latest work with his colleagues
on amplified wavelength-division-multiplexed transmission systems, which
they were the first to advocate for upgrading the transmission capacity
of long-distance telecommunications networks, has revolutionized
lightwave communications. |
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He holds a Ph.D. degree from Northwestern University, Evanston,
Illinois. He is a Fellow of the Optical Society of America, the
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the American
Association for the Advancement of Science, the Photonic Society of
Chinese-Americans, and the International Engineering Consortium. He is
also a member of the National Academy of Engineering, the Academia
Sinica (Taiwan) and the Chinese Academy of Engineering. Among the many
awards he has received are the IEEE 1975 W. R. G. Baker Prize, the IEEE
1979 David Sarnoff Award, the OSA/IEEE 1995 John Tyndall Award, the OSA
1997 Frederic Ives Medal/Jarus Quinn Endowment, the 1997 AT&T Science
and Technology Medal, the 1981 Alumni Merit Award from Northwestern
University, and Achievement Awards from the Chinese Institute of
Engineers/USA in 1978, the Chinese-American Academic and Professional
Society in 1983, and the Photonics Society of Chinese-Americans in 1998.
He was named an honorary professor at many universities in China
(including Tsinghua Univ., Shanghai Jiaotong Univ., Beijing Univ. of
Posts and Telecommunications, Northern Jiaotong Univ., Fudan Univ.,
Nankai Univ., Tianjin, Univ., Univ. of Electronic Science and Technology
of China, and Qufu Normal Univ.), and was granted an honorary Doctor of
Engineering degree by National Chiao Tung University in Taiwan. He has
been active in various professional societies, and was President of the
Optical Society of America in 1995. |
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กก
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