|
Companies
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
Company
6
|
Company
5
|
Company
4
|
Company
3
|
Company
2
|
Company
1
|
Photonics
(P2)
AWA's Photonics R&D was first undertaken by the AWA Physics Lab. under Dr Don Nicol where the first optical fibre was manufactured in Australia and the AWA Communications Lab. under Dr Jim Harvey where opto-electronic equipment and systems were developed. The Photonics projects were funded by AWA and joint funded with the Australian Industrial Research & Development Board (AIRDIB); Australian Defence Industry Development (DID); Telecom Research Laboratory (TRL) and Industry partners.
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
Item 1
|
Item 2
|
Item 3
|
Item 4
|
Item 5
|
Item 6 - 1985 - Fibre Strain Measurement System developed under contract to TRL (by Don Miller - AWARL) initially for a direct buried fibre cable trial at Ballarat in 1985. The system used a fibre splice on the cable drum to loop-back a 10MHz RF signal which was modulated onto a laser. The system could accurately measure 3cm of fibre strain in 3km of cable and when excessive strain was detected, an alarm was raised to stop the cable laying operation.
Item 7 - 1986 - Vertical Optical Fibre Drawing Tower developed by AWARL. The JV between Corning, MM and AWA in the late 80s to form Optical Waveguides Australia (OWA) resulted in this equipment being relocated to OWA, but Dr Don Nicol later organised for this equipment to be donated to the Optical Fibre Technology Centre (OFTC). Thus the AWA Photonics R&D was instrumental in the formation of the Australian Photonics CRC in the early 1990s and spin-off Photonics companies such as Redfern Fibres (Nufern), INDX (JDSU Australia) and Redfern Optical Components (ROC).
Item 8 - 1993 - AWANET-100 fibre-optic ring for mission critical voice/data applications such as the Australia-wide TAAATS Air Traffic Control system. This system employed a FDDI-2 standard fibre backbone with FDDI-2 chip-sets developed by AWA LAN Products and AWA MicroElectronics (now Peregrine Australia). Ross Halgren was the AWADI LAN Products Manager and his team contributed to various sections of the US ANSI FDDI-2 Standard.
Item 9 - 1996 - The FDDI-2 core technology and the AWANET-100 application technology were commoditised by Ross's team for AWA Defence Industries and AWA Communications into a standard VME / SCSA blade and a PCI / MVIP card for computer-telephony applications. The FDDI-2 / VME / SCSA (FMVS) blades in particular were marketed as MILNET2000 and were sold to Singapore Technologies as the backbone for their Naval Shipboard Integrated Communication System and to Telephonics New York for Airborne communications systems such as for the RAF NIMROD-2000 mid-life upgrade program and subsequently to General Dynamics in Canada.
Item
10 -
1997 - The FDDI-2 and AWANET-100 technologies were also packaged by Ross's team
for AWA Communications into a small, standalone, stackable, low cost, one rack
unit product called LightReach which included E1/T1, Serial Data and Ethernet
tributary interfaces. LightReach was subsequently deployed by the RTA in Sydney
for video surveillance networks and by Zetron UK as the backbone for an Air
Canada communications system.
Page 5 of 6