About the project
This PhD project aims to develop efficient Bi-doped fibres and to demonstrate next-generation ultra-broad Bi-doped fibre amplifiers in the wavelength band covering from 1150 to 1500nm and 1600 to1750nm.
Global internet traffic has grown exponentially over the past 2 decades with a predicted growth rate of around 40% year on year. This growth is driven primarily by bandwidth-hungry applications such as cloud computing, Telemedicine, 4K live streaming. Growth is expected to continue in the era of the Internet of Things and 5G.
The present optical fibre communication network’s capacity is solely based on the 11THz (C and L bands) gain bandwidth of erbium (Er) doped fibre amplifiers (EDFA) invented 3 decades ago. The scaling of the overall transmission capacity requires next-generation optical fibre amplifiers with ultra-broad gain bandwidths. As a researcher on this project, you will focus on helping to further utilise the low-loss window offered by the solid- and hollow-core silica optical fibres.
Your aim is to develop efficient Bi-doped fibres and also study their spectroscopic properties such as absorption and emission cross-sections to understand the near-IR luminescence. The focus will be on experimental work but can include simulations and modelling of new amplifiers based on your interests. You will evaluate the performance of Bi-doped fibre amplifiers in collaboration with our academic partners.
You will work in the in the Zeplar institute, home to the Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC), using their facilities to develop skills in specialty optical fibre fabrication and characterisation of doped fibres. You will gain new knowledge on fibre lasers and amplifiers and have opportunities to publish your work in high-impact journals and conferences.
Our recent work on a record level of gain (40dB) and also first-ever wideband (115nm) Bi-doped fibre amplifiers has been well received in the scientific community. It has also received significant attention from telecom industries.
