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17 Jun 2002
A US patent for dispersion-managed soliton applications could help BTG drive optical communications forward.
The global technology commercialization company BTG has been granted a Notice of Allowance from the US Patent and Trademark Office for its dispersion-managed soliton application.
Expecting a full patent to follow shortly, Ian Harvey, chief executive of BTG, said: "This is a very important patent and Solitons have the potential to revolutionize the telecommunications industry."
Solitons, first discovered in 1834, are stable solitary waves that travel without changing their shape. This means that they resist perturbations in the medium in which they are travelling and do not disperse. These qualities make solitons ideal for fiber-communications.
Nick Doran, chief officer at Marconi Solstis, UK, and researchers at UK-based Aston University first adapted the concept of solitons to practical photonics several years ago. The team developed dispersed-managed solitons that balance dispersive effects and combat non-linearity during optical transmissions while maintaining signal intensity.
Dispersion-managed solitons support optical transmissions over thousands of kilometers without a need to regenerate data through optical-electrical-optical conversion. This allows system manufacturers to build cost-effective ultra-long-haul (ULH) dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) networks.
BTG joined forces with Aston University in 1995 to develop the intellectual property portfolio and commercialize the technology. Further patent applications are pending.
The company says that the market for ULH DWDM systems is forecast to reach over USD 9 billion by 2005, growing from its current estimated value of USD 500 million.
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