ISCOM - Istituto Superiore delle Comunicazioni e delle Tecnologie dell'Informazione

In the last years Europe faced a massive telecommunications increment due, not only to greater spread of the capillary end user demand, but also to one strongly presence of Internet inside the companies like spreading vehicle for business information. This factor has focused the need to increase the data amount usable through the telecom infrastructure in order to guarantee and to satisfy the relative demand.

From 2002 the European commission started to focus its interest in the wide bandwidth like a key factor to increase the economic trend in Europe and today Viviane Reding confirms that the presence of wide bandwidth internet connections represent a fundamental condition for the growth of the electronic market and the occupation in all the economy sectors. The wide bandwidth, in fact, represent in the UE and in all the Member States one of the corner stones for the markets opening.

Movie: “Tour of Laboratories”

Visit to the research laboratories of ISCOM's New Generation Infrastructures and Devices Sector.

The High Institute of Communication and Information Technology is a research and technical body of the Italian Communication Ministry whose aim is a deeply involvement in the area of standardization, research and services applications in the field of Telecommunications and Information Technologies. In this scenario the New Generation Infrastructures and Devices Sector of ISCOM Division II is working and is involved on topics related to: theoretical and experimental investigation on high bit rate WDM systems, wavelength conversion and optical 3R regeneration, distributed and lumped amplification, low-cost receivers implementation, investigation and realization of broad band Passive Optical Networks (PON) and free space optical communications (FSO). Under the supervision of the ISCOM Director, the New Generation Infrastructures and Devices Sector has signed agreements with the major Italian Universities and International research centers like: University of Roma “Tor Vergata”, University of Roma “Roma Tre”, University of Roma “Sapienza”, Pisa Research Center (CNIT), University of Padova (DEI), National Institute of Nuclear Phisics (INFN) and Instituto de Telecomunicações (IT – Aveiro). Furthermore research activities in the TLC area are carried out also with “Politecnico di Milano”, “Swansea University”, “Academy of Science” (IREE) Prague, Athens Information Technology Center (AIT), Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya and the Queen Mary College of London.

Furthermore, in the framework of agreement with the University of Rome Tor Vergata and Roma Tre, is funding PhD positions to increase the quality of its expertise and the number of its researchers. The New Generation Infrastructures and Devices Sector has a full time access to an experimental deployed cable between Rome and Pomezia (about 25 km one way far from Rome), a test bed on passive optical networks made by an OLT and several ONUs working at 1Gbit. An FSO test bed, PMD and CD (Chromatic Dispersion) testing devices, OTDR and several OSAs, together with facilities (several labs with optical tables), a clean room (in collaboration with Office III), several Climatic Chambers (in collaboration with Office III) and instrumentations. New Generation Infrastructures and Devices Sector personnel has been and is up to now involved in several European projects and actions as COST 218, COST 246, COST 270, COST 291, ACTS-ESTHER, IST ATLAS and NoE ePhotonOne+. ISCOM is member of International Standardization Bodies as ITU, IEC, ETSI etc.

Main Research Themes of the New Generation Infrastructures and Devices Sector of ISCOM Division II:

• High Bit Rate Dense WDM systems.
• Semiconductor Optical Amplifiers for new network devices and ultra fast logic.
• Fiber optical non linear phenomena characterization for new network node devices in the access and transport network.
• New network wired topologies (PON-GE) for new flexible networks up to the end user.
• Wireless Transmission techniques (Free Space Optical Wireless) for ultra wide bandwidth applications in the last mile and for disaster recovery.