The Hindu Business Line : Trail-blazing

An Indian research institute has come up with the country's first indigenously developed optical fibre amplifier in collaboration with a private sector partner.

IT was set up in 1950 as one of the first four laboratories under the umbrella of the Council for Scientific & Industrial Research. Its mandate at that time: to develop indigenous specialty ceramic and glass technology for industrial and defence applications.

Today, 55 years later, the Central Glass & Ceramic Research Institute (CGCRI), Kolkata, has also come up with India's first indigenously developed optical fibre amplifier in collaboration with private sector partner Network System Technology Group (NeST Group). A few units of the amplifier systems developed have been successfully deployed at cable TV networks of RPG Netcom and Cablecom in Kolkata and Incable in Mumbai.

The erbium doped optical fibre used for attaining the complete integration of multiple amplifier devices has been developed by scientists at CGCRI. The developed amplifiers have been tested in a test bed created specifically for the purpose at CGCRI.

A commercial agreement has been entered into between CGCRI and NeST Photonics, a NeST Group company for marketing the product in the domestic and export markets. "This is the first collaborative effort in the public-private domain for development of a commercial product in the area of optical fibre technology in the country," says Dr H.S. Maiti, Director of CGCRI.

For starters, these amplifiers are the key components used in cable TV networks and telecommunications systems. Optical fibre gain blocks are used intermittently along optical cable lines to restore energy loss during transmission through a fibre network that helps to maintain the high quality of picture, sound and data. Amplifiers are used for long-distance transmission, including in cross-country telecommunications networks. While the present development has been made in single channel specific to the cable TV industry, the focus will now be on improvisation and scaling up of the system.

A multi-channel, scaled-up version could well hit the market within the next 3-4 months.

According to Dr Maiti, broadband flat gain erbium doped fibre amplifiers are currently in focus in the light of the dense wavelength division multiplexed (DWDM) transmission needed to carry large volumes of information. CGCRI is currently working in this area to cater to the evolving needs of players in the telecom arena in India.

According to Dr Maiti, serious development work in fibre optics at CGCRI took off 15 years ago. In the last five years, human resources were concentrated on the development of special fibres. State-of-the-art optical fibre technology was developed.

However, the technology was very capital-intensive and, hence, had few takers in industry.

"The technology could not be transferred to industry owing to techno-economic reasons beyond our control. As such, we revised our original plan and concentrated on the development of technology for specialty optical fibre with focus on its marketability," says Dr Maiti.

The specialty fibre is now made in a pilot plant at CGCRI. Since it is used in amplifiers as the medium through which voice, data and pictures can be carried, it can be sold to manufacturers of equipment such as amplifiers. The desired effect is achieved since the optical fibre that is used is doped with erbium, a rare earth element that has the appropriate energy levels in its atomic configuration to amplify a band of light waves of around 1550 nano-metres dimension.

To facilitate commercial application and marketing of the development, private sector partner NeST Group has been involved in the initiative from the very beginning.

Today, NeST Photonics has been entrusted with the task of marketing the erbium doped fibre amplifiers. CGCRI will be a paid a royalty on the total sales that are achieved.

While initially the revenue earned by CGCRI from this initiative may well be small, the potential in the long term could well be huge, especially when the development is scaled up to facilitate its applicability in India's, and indeed the world's, fast growing telecom spectrum.

ambar_singhroy@rediffmail.com

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