University of Melbourne Centre for Energy-Efficient Telecommunications files first patent

Stephen Withers
Thursday, 03 November 2011 13:41

Business IT - Networking

Research breakthrough promises more energy-efficient fibre networks.

The University of Melbourne's Centre for Energy-Efficient Telecommunications (CEET) has filed its first patent. Filed in conjunction with Bell Labs - the research arm of CEET partner Alcatel-Lucent, the patent promises to further improve the energy efficiency of fibre to the premises networks.

"We are very pleased to announce this research breakthrough, which has resulted from collaborations between CEET researchers and researchers at Bell Labs in Murray Hill, New Jersey," said Professor Rod Tucker, chair of the CEET operations committee. "The key idea in this research is a more energy-efficient approach to encoding data on the optical signals that are sent from the telephone exchange to the home."

Project chief investigator Alan Lee explained that the invention will enable to make significant improvements to broadband fibre networks as a natural part of future planned upgrades to higher bandwidth.

CEET is a partnership between the University of Melbourne, Alcatel-Lucent and the Victorian Government. Projects carried out at the centre fall into three: modelling, transmission, and fundamentals, with the goal of improving improve the energy efficiency of the Internet and keeping the total energy of the Internet under control as the amount of data on the network increases and as the number of users expands.