WDM research
LightPath Technologies Inc., Albuquerque, NM, has received U.S. government funding of more than $500,000 to supply a critical element of a next-generation multiplexing device that increases the data, voice and video carrying power of optical fiber in wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM). The company`s gradium glass has light-bending, focusing and color-separating abilities, which help solve the problem for a universally applicable WDM.
Current WDMs allow only a limited number of wavelengths to be transmitted optically because of inadequate coupler-lens technology between the fiber and the WDM. LightPath and the Microelectronics Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin have begun the WDM project with grants from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization.