PhotonLab

The Optcom group has recently acquired access to a new experimental facility called PhotonLab, which is a joint venture between Politecnico di Torino and Istituto Mario Boella.
 

PhotonLab is a shared facility and 5 groups cooperate in tight coordination within it:

• The OptCom Group
• The Optical Networking Group
• The Optoelectronics and Components Group
• The Electro-Magnetics Group
• The Materials Group

PhotonLab is a 250 square meters laboratory that includes an optical system and network experiment area, plus a clean room, an electronics lab, a machine shop and a dark room. The whole facility is in filtered air, with the clean room being class 1000. The whole floor is large concrete blocks suspended on giant coils to isolate the lab from external vibrations. 
 
The system experiment section is equipped with state-of-the-art Test and Measurement equipment, encompassing a 12.5 Gbit/s BER tester, two 50 GHz oscilloscopes, several Optical Spectrum Analyzers, Optical and Electrical Network Analyzers up to 40 GHz, ten EDFAs, 500 km of long-haul-grade Truewave Fiber, and hundreds of optical and electro-optical components  acquired through various donations from Agilent, CISCO and Marconi. 40 Gbit/s equipment is currently being evaluated for acquisition within 2004.  

As a results the OptCom Group  is well equipped to carry out all sorts of experiments within the scope of this proposal. In addition PhotonLab has just acquired access to 8 rings for a total of 240 km of dark installed fiber in the whole city of Torino, supplied by the operator FASTWEB. The rings go through busy avenues, over bridges, along railway tracks, through residential as well as industrial areas. They also go through several POPs of the operator. This testbed enables actual field measurements to be carried out from within the lab, where the dark fiber is terminated, which is something of great value to give significance to the experimental results of the proposed project.