Anthony Lenihan, Ph.D.
     
Home
Research
Publications
Links
    Research Activities
 I am currently affiliated with the experimental fiber optics research group at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), under the direction of Prof. Gary Carter. We operate laboratories at both UMBC and the Laboratory for Physical Sciences (LPS) in College Park, MD. and have frequently collaborated with the theoretical group of Prof. Curtis Menyuk at UMBC. Research activities have included the study of polarization effects in recirculating loops, accurate characterization and modeling of pattern effects in receivers, and phase-shift keyed transmission.  Additionally, through our collaboration with the Laboratory for Telecommunications Science in Adelphi, MD, we are able to perform experiments on two installed networks: ATDNet in the Washington, D. C. metropolitan area, and BOSSNet, a long-haul link between Washington, D.C. and Boston, MA, allowing us to compare laboratory and field measurements. Some current research areas are listed below.

Nonlinear fibers for polarization-independent optical signal processing 

Nonlinear effects in fibers, such as cross-phase modulation (XPM) and four-wave mixing (FWM), are attractive for all-optical signal processing because of their ultrafast response. However, the polarization dependence of these effects has typically limited their usefulness. We have recently reported several new techniques for mitigating this polarization dependence in highly nonlinear fibers, such as bismuth oxide and photonic crystal fibers (PCF). In the PCF, the residual birefringence can be used to realize polarization insensitive FWM and XPM, which we have utilized to demonstrate demultiplexing and wavelength conversion, as detailed in several recent publications.

PMD-aware routing for optical networks                                                      

Time-varying impairments such as polarization mode dispersion (PMD) are serious issues for optical networks, especially as data rates increase. PMD compensators can be expensive and inefficient to implement. An alternative approach is to have a network control plane which is aware of impairments on the various links, and makes routing decisions based on this information. In collaboration with Mid-Atlantic Crossroads (MAX), we have performed a simple demonstration of this idea. An RF tone sensor was used to feed real-time PMD data from an installed link to the control plane software, which could then make routing decisions based on the current impairment level.

High data rate transmission                                                                           

We are currently preparing a recirculating loop system for transmission at data rates of 160+ Gb/s. This system will employ state-of-the-art fibers for nonlinearity and dispersion control, as well as integrate some of the polarization-independent all-optical devices we have been developing.

If you are interested in my previous research on semiconductor quantum dots, a brief summary of those results can be found here.