ORC Seminar Series

Prof. Liam Barry
School of Electronic Engineering, Dublin City University

Date: Wednesday 21 May
Time: 2pm
Venue: Building 46, Lecture Theatre C (room 2005) 

Wavelength tuneable lasers are rapidly becoming a mainstream component in photonic networks. In addition to providing immediate cost saving for Wavelength Division Multiplexed (WDM) networks in the areas of back-up transmitters and inventory reduction, these tuneable devices may also be employed to implement wavelength packet routing in WDM systems. In these networks WDM optical packets are generated by a fast tuneable light source, and the wavelength packets can then be routed to specific nodes in the optical network by using simple optical filtering techniques. In this talk I will present various limitations of using tunable lasers in optically switched WDM networks, and also present various solutions that can be used to overcome these problems. The talk will focus on both commercially available SG-DBR devices, and also novel device structures which can be used to achieve enhanced performance.

Liam Barry received his BE (Electronic Engineering) and MEngSc (Optical Communications) degrees from University College Dublin in 1991 and 1993 respectively. From February 1993 until January 1996 he was employed as a Research Engineer in the Optical Systems Department of France Telecom's Research Laboratories (CNET) in Lannion, France, and obtained his PhD Degree from the University of Rennes for his work on optical pulse processing in OTDM networks. In February 1996 he joined the Applied Optics Centre in Auckland University, New Zealand, as a Reseach Fellow, and in March 1998 he took up a position in the School of Electronic Engineering at Dublin City University, and established the Radio and Optical Communications Laboratory , which is part of the Research Institute for Networks and Communications Engineering (RINCE). He is currently Director of RINCE and a Principal Investigator for Science Foundation Ireland. His main research interests include the generation, characterisation, and processing of ultrashort optical pulses; the characterisation and applications of tunable lasers for optical burst and packet switched networks; and hybrid radio/fibre distribution systems.