High-capacity optical fiber transmission systems are the backbone of modern telecommunication networks. The research activity focuses on both long-haul systems and local-area networks.

• Modeling and characterization of multi-mode fibers.
• Mode-sensitive distributed characterization techniques.
• Theoretical and experimental analysis of mode coupling in multi-mode fibers.
• Analysis of spun multi-mode fibers.
• Characterization of gigabit passive optical networks (GPON).
• Modeling of reflective semiconductor optical amplifiers (RSOA) for GPON.

Homepage: http://peg.dei.unipd.it/

People:  Andrea Galtarossa (contact person), Marco Santagiustina, Luca Palmieri

Optical fibers can act as sensors, because they are intrinsically sensitive to (among the others) temperature, strain and magnetic fields. Beside enabling the multiplexing of several tens of discrete sensors, optical fibers sensors have the unique ability of performing distributed monitoring, where the physical field under analysis can be measured over the entire length of the fiber (up to several kilometers) with spatial resolution ranging from few centimeters to few meters The research activity covers the following topics:

• Distributed magnetic field and current sensors.
• Distributed temperature monitoring at cryogenic level (in collaboration with CERN, Genève).
• Distributed acoustic sensing.
• Distributed torsion measurements.
• FBG-based optical fiber sensors for the monitoring of river embankments.
• Geological and geotechnical application of optical fiber sensors.

Homepage: http://peg.dei.unipd.it/

People: Luca Palmieri (Contact person), Marco Santagiustina, Andrea Galtarossa

Nonlinear effects in optical fibers enable several kind of all-optical signal processing, ranging from amplification to filtering. In particular, the research activity focuses on the following topics:

• Raman amplification in multi-mode fibers.

• Modeling of four-wave mixing in multi-mode fibers.

• Parametric amplification in multi-mode fibers.

• Implementation and characterization of dynamic Brillouin gratings.

• All-optical filtering based on dynamic Brillouin gratings.

Homepage: http://peg.dei.unipd.it/

People: Marco Santagiustina (Contact person), Luca Palmieri, Andrea Galtarossa

Polarization-sensitive optical coherence tomography (PS-OCT) is an imaging technique that allows non-invasive in-depth imaging of biological specimens. In particular, the sensitivity to polarization allows to increase the imaging contrast of specific tissues, like muscles; moreover, the optical-fiber implementation of PS-OCT is particularly robust and versatile. The topics covered by the research activity are the following:

• Modeling and mitigation strategies of polarization mode dispersion (PMD).

• Implementation of a PS-OCT.

• Development of data analysis algorithms for polarization inverse scattering problems.

Homepage: http://peg.dei.unipd.it/

People: Luca Palmieri (Contact person), Andrea Galtarossa