Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

With telecommunication deregulations and technological advancements, traditional communication and media broadcasting services merge together. Cable television (CATV) providers geared to provide voice and Internet services over their hybrid-fiber coaxial network (HFC), entering the so called 'triple play' while, Telco's provide Internet and phone over their telephone networks. The need for bandwidth is higher than ever before, especially at the wake of high definition televisions (HDTV). Fast emerging fiber to the home (FTTH) promises broadband access delivered to our doorsteps. Fiber-wireless systems gain popularity as well, bringing the RF signal closer to the broadband wireless users. In all these access networks (HFC, FTTH and fiber-wireless) fiber is in the back end. Hundreds of video and audio signals are modulated on RF carriers and transmitted over fiber (radio-over-fiber). The fiber medium is often enhanced with wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) and configured as passive optical networks (PON). Although fiber has enough bandwidth, other issues like nonlinear distortion; limited power handling capability; limited dynamic range; chromatic dispersion and large losses challenge the quality of service. The RF signal is essentially analog and signal reconstruction won't be possible to overcome the impairments in an end-to-end path. The research program targets on investigating signal distortions over optical access networks with an electrical last mile. The last mile could be (coaxial) cable or air. Electrical and optical domain signal processing techniques will be investigated to improve the quality of the multimedia signals delivered to the user. Results will be verified experimentally using existing lab facilities.