Foundation
Information
Modern humanity and the global economy rely on optical infrastructures and technologies to drive our digital society. We will continue to see exponential data traffic. The cost of this growth is communications draws a significant fraction of the energy society uses. New, more energy-efficient approaches and technologies must be developed and adapted to permit continued information growth. Our information and communications lifeline demand innovation and game-changing discoveries to keep up. We are soliciting proposals to continue improving the tools the information community can bring to bear to meet current and future challenges.
Proposals of interest could include but are not limited to:
- Developing optical technologies and novel innovations that Improve communication bandwidth, integrity and access at scalable levels (e.g., achieving lower optical fiber/component loss, wider optical amplification bandwidth, lower optical amplification noise, higher modulation/detection speed, higher sensitivity detectors, lower power consumption receivers, higher optical switching density, and broader optical communication coverage etc.).
- Enhancing connectivity by finding more efficient, speedy and reliable connectivity between devices, communications infrastructure and the cloud (e.g., more efficient transmission in the P2MP architecture of PON and simpler optical layer in metro-networks etc.)
- Exploring undersea and space-based solutions for the global communications grid.
- Exploring high-sensitivity optical sensors and detectors.
- Furthering the miniaturization of high-speed processing circuits for communications.
- Balancing the need for resilience and performance with cost and energy efficiency in communication infrastructure.
- Furthering the development of integrated photonic and electronic devices for lower power and higher speed. The emerging field of quantum computation and communication offers a significant opportunity to achieve improved performance over the more conventional information approaches, and concepts in this area should also be considered.
- Enhancing the core technology of augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) devices and other wearable products.
- Improving sensor technology and subsystems to support the IoT and the embedded photonics in smartphones, tablets and other consumer products.
- Exploring new optical sensing technologies to improve various parameter monitoring capabilities.
- Enhancing and improving the energy efficiency of commercial display devices.
- Other proposals exploring innovative, groundbreaking research or technology developments are welcome and encouraged.
