Delivery& Installation160Gbaud Optical Communications Testbed for the Photonics Systems Group for the Tyndall National Institute

Tender description

Tenders are sought for the supply, delivery and installation of a 160Gbaud Optical Communications Testbed for the Photonics Systems Group. The Photonic Systems Group is seeking to upgrade its optical communication system test facility from its current 50 Gbaud line rate capability to 160 Gbaud line rates to enable the group to carry out research and development on the cutting-edge, high speed optical fibre communication technologies that will be required to underpin the future internet. The testbed transmitter will enable the generation of very high bandwidth (80GHz) complex electrical waveforms that facilitate the encoding of multiple bits of information per pulse. This functionality is referred to as arbitrary waveform generation (AWG). The AWG will drive optical sources and modulators that will be developed by the group and its collaborators, or procured separately as off-the-shelf commercial components. At the receiver side of the testbed an optical modulation analyser (OMA) incorporating an optical coherent receiver and high speed, real time digital oscilloscope are required for the detection and analysis of the complex-modulated, high bandwidth optical signals generated by the transmitter. Together the AWG, OMA and Oscilloscope will make up the 160 Gbaud testbed which will be used to facilitate research on novel high speed optical component and system concepts for next-generation optical interconnects for data centres, and for access, metro and long haul networks.