NICTA inks commercial license agreement with Optium

DECEMBER 11, 2007 -- Australia's Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Research Centre of Excellence (NICTA) has signed a commercial license agreement with Optium Corp. (search for Optium) covering optical signal-to-noise ratio (search for OSNR) monitoring technology.

According to the companies, this is the first technology licence agreement exploiting research in the Managing and Monitoring the Internet (MAMI) project, which is based at NICTA's Victoria Research Laboratory.

NICTA says its new generation OSNR monitoring technology is compatible with optical switches, including reconfigurable optical add/drop multiplexers (search for ROADM), and can distinguish and measure the impairment caused by optical amplifier noise, improving the ability to manage telecommunications networks.

"We are delighted to enter into this agreement with Optium," contends NICTA chief executive officer, Dr. David Skellern. "The licensed technology is the product of a number of years of work by an outstanding research team and represents the first of a number of related new technologies due to be released by NICTA over the next twelve months."

"We are excited to have exclusive rights for the use of NICTA's breakthrough OSNR technology in our WSS ROADM," adds Dr. Simon Poole, vice president and general manager of Optium Australia.

"The advanced features of NICTA's digital signal processing technology, including its capability for 40-Gbit/sec systems across different modulation schemes on both 50- and 100-GHz channel spacing, will continue to differentiate Optium's WSS ROADM product line," he continues. "The embedded technology will provide customers with a true measure of the noise within the transmission bandwidth, enabling network-wide awareness and improving the management of high-speed optical networks."

NICTA says the technology operates in-band, providing live information on actual performance. The company says its monitor is faster and less complex than similar devices on the market.

"These advantages enable network-wide awareness and significantly improves an operator's ability to manage high-speed optical networks," notes Trevor Anderson, NICTA principal researcher and MAMI project leader. "The information provided by the monitor will provide additional confidence in the robustness of new high-speed networks supporting highly efficient network designs."

NICTA says the licensing agreement represents the beginning of what it hopes will be a long-term relationship with Optium as a partner in the development and commercialization of optical networking technologies coming out of NICTA.

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