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The world's longest high capacity terrestrial commercial communications system, now deployed worldwide, was developed from Aston University's pioneering research on the concept of dispersion managed solitons. The concepts and expertise from this research were used to develop and implement the associated system design for high capacity (1Tb/s) WDM (wavelength division multiplexing) transmission over 1000s of kilometres. Commercial development was led by Prof Doran and the core team from Aston who left the University to found Marconi-Solstis, a part of Marconi plc. Prof Doran and other key members of this team have since returned to Aston The system, now owned by Ericsson, (but still called Marconi MHL3000) has current annual sales of order $100M, and employs hundreds of people worldwide.
Research into distributed optical fibre sensing undertaken at the Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC) at the University of Southampton has had profound economic and environmental impact within the oil and gas industries in both extraction efficiency from existing reservoirs and improved safety performance and operation of three companies: Optasense, Stingray Geophysical and Schlumberger. Each of these companies have established highly competitive positions in the worldwide optical sensor market and collectively employ more than 160 people in the south of England, in their distributed sensing programmes having benefitted from the adoption of this new technology that contributes to the management of environmental risks and hazards.
Ultra-precise Bragg grating writing-technology, invented in the Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC), has led to impacts in the areas of security, safety, detection of bio-hazards and the underpinning laser technology currently being pursued for clean energy generation for future energy security. This case study highlights two aspects of the technology namely: planar-based for optical microchip sensors in areas such as portable detection of biohazards, which has resulted in the spin-out Stratophase, and fibre-based, inside the US National Ignition Facility (NIF), the world's largest laser system, based in California, built for fusion-energy research, which has ORC fabricated fibre Bragg gratings within its laser amplifier chains. These ultra-high precision laser-written engineered gratings have enabled important advances in biosecurity, management of environmental hazards and clean energy research.
New commercial gas sensing technology developed from research at the University of Strathclyde brings extensive technical, operational, safety and cost benefits to applications such as mine safety and leak detection in methane production, storage, piping and transport systems. World-wide commercial sales (in Japan, China and the USA) began in late 2010 through a spin out company, OptoSci Ltd. Sales are growing and have amounted to a total of £250k since launch plus a customisation contract for £193k, leading to jobs sustainability and growth. In addition to economic impacts, the technology also brings health and safety benefits in the gas distribution and mining industries through human safety assurance in the event of gas leaks / build up.
Today's global telecom systems are powered by technology developed at the University of Glasgow. This technology has been utilised, endorsed and developed by a series of internationally successful companies, facilitating multimillion pound investment from across Europe and the USA for the companies.
Gemfire Europe acquired the University of Glasgow IP and technology and between 2008 and 2012 launched a range of `green' products with reduced power consumption. The company's revenues reached $12m annually and in 2013, Gemfire was one of the world's top five planar lightwave circuit companies. Gemfire was bought by Kaiam, one of the world's market-leading optical networking companies in April 2013, stimulating further innovation and investment in the production of high-speed components for the global data networking market.
This research has led to the creation of new business sectors in laser development for medical and healthcare applications, which has enabled the creation of a world-wide market worth US$96 million in 2011, and a local spin-out, Fianium Ltd, which now has more than 50 employees and an annual turnover of around £10 million. Exploiting a radically new optical component invented at the University of Southampton, the microstructured optical fibre (MOF), this research has led to economic benefit through the creation of hundreds of jobs worldwide, and enabled the development of new diagnostic and medical technologies.
Pioneering research at Bangor on the advanced communications technology termed Optical Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OOFDM) has enabled industrial impact with global implications. OOFDM was a candidate technique for the ITU-T G989.1 NG-PON2 and the IEEE 802.3bm standards and is currently under consideration by the IEEE 802.3 400Gb/s Ethernet Study Group. Supported by 8 patent families and first-phase funding of £1.1M, in 2013, the pre-revenue Bangor University spin-off company Smarterlight Limited, was established. Smarterlight has deployed services to several international telecommunications companies to develop advanced solutions for access optical networks and data centres.
The commercialisation of Quantum Cascade Lasers (QCL) and the associated novel fabrication processes developed at the University of Glasgow has provided Compound Semiconductor Technologies Global Ltd (CSTG) with a new foundry product supplying quantum cascade lasers for gas sensing, safety and security, and military applications. This resulted in 40% turnover growth from 2010-2012 and the company is now recognised as a global leader in QCLs and their fabrication. Based on University of Glasgow research, the company has created a manufacturing toolbox for the production of a wide variety of QCL chip designs. CSTG has also achieved a world first, manufacturing QCLs for systems that detect explosives at a safe distance and can counter heat-seeking missile attacks on aircraft.
Optical fibre sensor technology developed at Cranfield has supported development and subsequent sales of state-of-the-art superconducting magnet systems made by Oxford Instruments. The sensors provide detailed information on the magnets' performance that is critical to successful and safe operation. The fibre sensors have been deployed in:
Cranfield's research contributed to a doubling of the engineering and design staff at Oxford Instruments and 20% increases in turnover and technical staff at an instrumentation company, AOS Technology.
The performance of absolute distance measuring systems has been improved in terms of accuracy, traceability, reliability and cost through the introduction of new methodology arising from research at the University of Oxford. This has brought commercial benefit to a German company making measurement systems, through the creation of a new product line. New capabilities for measurement have been delivered to a first customer in Germany. The research has also resulted in the establishment of new activity at the National Physical Laboratory, and influenced UK and European technology roadmaps for future manufacturing.