| Bell Labs at Forefront of Government Communications Solutions July 15, 2004 ? The U.S. Department of Defense needs long-range, super-fast, ultra-high capacity communications systems, and it's asking Bell Labs to help lead the research that will create them. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) announced recently that it had awarded Bell Labs multiple contracts for research on new laser and optical communications technologies. "Bell Labs is at the forefront of creating solutions that greatly enhance the communications capabilities of our government customers," said Rick Miller, senior vice president in Lucent's Government Solutions group. "The work Bell Labs is doing is a major reason for our growing success in serving the government market." Pushing the Boundaries
Under one of the contracts, Bell Labs and the New Jersey Nanotechnology Consortium (NJNC) at Bell Labs are conducting research and developing new laser-based technologies for communicating huge amounts of high-speed data over long distances -- between earth and satellites, or from airplane to airplane, for example. This marks the second phase of DARPA's Coherent Communications Imaging and Targeting (CCIT) program, which will demonstrate new technologies for doing secure, high-speed, long-range laser communication. Lucent is leading a team of subcontractors and technical partners that includes such notable organizations as Sandia National Laboratories, Stanford University, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman Space & Mission Systems. "Our team is pushing the boundaries of what's technically possible," said Dave Bishop, vice president of Nanotechnology Research at Bell Labs, and president of the NJNC. "We're integrating photonics and high-speed electronics into one system for a quantum leap in laser-based communications." But the technology will have commercial applications as well, Bishop said, in astronomy and health care, for example. Mike Geller, vice president, Bell Labs Government Communications Lab, and his team will aid in delivering a scalable prototype system using some of the new technologies Bishop and his group are developing. "The system will digitally manipulate optical beams, like radio beams are manipulated today, enabling better communications over farther distances," Geller said. DARPA Picks IRIS
Another contract supports Lucent's Integrated Router Interconnected Spectrally (IRIS) optical router proposal project, which aims to produce an all-optical router whose capacity can grow as network traffic grows. The IRIS project was one of two efforts selected to receive funding under DARPA's Data in the Optical Domain Networking program.  | | Martin Zirngibl, research director in Lucent's Optical Networking group, leads the team of scientists working on the IRIS project. | "Data traffic related to military applications is growing every day, and current solutions are not scalable," said Martin Zirngibl, a research director in Lucent's Optical Networking group who leads the team of scientists working on the project. "Like everyone else, the U.S. government wants to be able to handle more traffic faster, on optical routers that are smaller than current routers, but have more throughput and lower power consumption." Zirngibl believes the Lucent proposal was successful because it clearly addressed the customer's needs, and because Bell Labs brings unmatched strengths to any undertaking involving communications research. "This project requires cutting-edge technology, invention and creativity -- all readily available at Bell Labs," he said. "Other companies just don't have our depth." The recent wins with DARPA are the result of an intense focus on government R&D. Lucent has made serving the government market a major focus, with Bell Labs as a central part of that focus. | 
