NJIT Physics Department Seminar

February 2nd, Monday

Photonic Signal Processing using Integrated Optical Circuits

Dr. Inuk Kang

LGS Innovations, Florham Park, NJ

(Optics, Host: Ahn)

Time: 11:45am-12:45pm with 11:30am tea time

Room: ECE202

Abstract:

The exponential growth of internet traffic continues unabated with proliferation of bandwidth-hogging applications and mobile devices.  The speed at which the data traffic has been increasing has outstripped the pace of Moore’s law and is beginning to challenge the optical transport capacity, which until quite recently was considered abundant and cheap. Lately, the strategy to increase the optical transport capacity has centered on more efficient use of easily available optical spectrum by using complex multi-level modulation formats, as the available optical wavelengths become fully lit.  At the same time, the fiber optical communication is becoming more computationally intensive as it is beginning to rely on coherent reception and computational penalty mitigation.  This reliance on high-speed electronic signal processing poses two significant challenges, which are increased energy consumption and network latency. Signal processing in the optical domain, especially using compact photonic integrated devices, is an alternative that can offer substantial reduction in energy consumption with increased processing speed. In this talk, I will present my recent activities supporting all-optical signal processing and photonic integration in fiber-optical communication.

Biography:

Dr. Inuk Kang is a Principal Optical Investigator at LGS Innovations. He received his Ph. D. in Physics (1997) from Cornell University. Prior to joining LGS Innovations in 2013, Dr. Kang was an Associate Professor at Seoul National University in South Korea. From 2000-2012, he was a Member of Technical Staff at Bell Labs in Holmdel, New Jersey. He is a Fellow of Optical Society of America and served as an Associate Editor for Optics Express from 2008-2014. He has over 100 publications and 15 patents in the areas of integrated photonics and fiber optical communication. His current research interests include photonic signal processing, integrated optics, high-power lasers and amplifiers, and quantum information.