Raytheon BBN to push limits of optical communications and imaging encoding in DARPA InPho research program
Dec. 26, 2010
CAMBRIDGE, Mass., 26 Dec. 2010. Raytheon BBN Technologies in Cambridge, Mass., will develop ways to encode optical communications and imaging systems information as efficiently as the laws of quantum physics permit under terms of a $2.1 million contract awarded from the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in Arlington, Va., as part of the DARPA Information in a Photon, or InPho, program.
Raytheon BBN, a wholly owned subsidiary of Raytheon Co. (NYSE: RTN), will do work under two projects in the DARPA InPho program. The first project, Photon Information Efficient Communications (PIECOMM), will create techniques to increase the limits of optical communications technology while approaching the ultimate limits of photon information efficiency.
Achieving this goal will increase power management, speed, and reach significantly on free-space optical communications links, including far-field links used in deep space, Raytheon BBN officials say.
The second project, Fundamental Information Capacity of Electromagnetism with Squeezing and Spatial Entanglement (FINESSE), will determine the theoretical performance limits for imaging technology as determined by the laws of quantum physics.
In collaboration with the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Va., Raytheon BBN will investigate newly engineered quantum states of light with superior imaging performance. The program will result in a fundamentally new technology for imaging in the near and the far field, company officials say.
Raytheon BBN experts will generate and demonstrate experimental solutions, such as multiple-spatial-mode design and adaptive joint-detection receivers that attain communications at 10-bits per photon and 5-bits/sec/Hz while simultaneously encoding information in space and time. This work will be done in close collaboration with leading researchers in optical communications, quantum optics and information theory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass.
Raytheon BBN will develop new sources of quantum-entangled light and state-of-the-art optical sensor technologies to demonstrate improvement in the information efficiency of light used for imaging.
For more information contact Raytheon BBN Technologies online at http://bbn.com, or DARPA at www.darpa.mil.
John Keller is editor-in-chief of Military & Aerospace Electronics magazine, which provides extensive coverage and analysis of enabling electronic and optoelectronic technologies in military, space, and commercial aviation applications. A member of the Military & Aerospace Electronics staff since the magazine's founding in 1989, Mr. Keller took over as chief editor in 1995.
