The NationalScience Foundation (NSF) has approved an Industry/University CooperativeResearch Center for Optical Wireless Applications (COWA), housed in the Collegeof Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

The new center willbe mainly supported by participating industry members for the first five-year period, including seed funding from the NSF. It will substantially impact theadvanced technology of optical wireless systems and applications for imaging,sensing, and communication networks. A joint effort with Pennsylvania StateUniversity, COWA will be led on the Georgia Tech side by Gee-Kung Chang,Georgia Research Alliance (GRA) Eminent Scholar and Byers Endowed Professor in OpticalNetworking at the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE). MohsenKavehrad, a chair professor in the Department ofElectrical Engineering, will lead the Center’s efforts at Penn State.

The goal of thecenter is to foster an innovative research environment driven by industrialneeds to develop leading edge, radio-over-fiber technologies for deliveringmulti-gigabit, multi-band wireless services over optical access networks with 100xmore capacity at higher bit rates and longer reach than current wirelesscommunications. Four ECE professors at Georgia Tech–Nikil S. Jayant, RaghupathySivakumar, Stephen E. Ralph, and John R. Barry–will work with Dr. Chang in thisnew center. Their research tasks will include developing integratedopto-electronics components with smart optical-wireless interfaces necessary tofacilitate collaborative functions and features among digital, RF, and opticalsystems.