Two professors of the Technical University of Eindhoven have worked together for nearly five million, received a subsidy for their research into wireless communication with beams of light and the development of combined chips.
The two professors, Ton Koonen, and Meint Smit, both of which are connected with the faculty of Electrical Engineering and the research school COBRA, have their so-called Advanced Grant received from the European Research Council. This grant is intended for senior researchers in Europe – is good for almost 2.5 million euro per grant, the university announced.
Koonen is going to use the grant for five years to do research on wireless communications with bundles of light for the thickness of a pencil instead of radio waves. “Do you want to in the future to higher speeds, than you will be with light beams instead of radio waves to work,” predicts Koonen. “It gives you much more data to process. Other advantages are that the rays of light to not disturb each other, and power efficient and that they are independent can be used. In the current system, you share the capacity of a wave with multiple users.”
The grant that Smith received will be used to create a new chip to develop optical and electronic circuits, integrates. The big advantage of a combined chip is, according to Smith, that the smaller and cheaper, considerably faster and more energy efficient than two separate chips. “When you get optical chips used, you have the electronics necessary for driving or reading or for data processing. Until now, there were separate chips to be used”, says the professor.
The Sat emphasized in the mouths of Koonen that it is exceptional that there are two professors from a university in the prizes: “One in ten applications is successful.”