Last Mile by Laser

Short-range infrared lasers could beam advanced broadband multimedia services directly into homes and offices

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A Broadband Wireless Access Network Based on Mesh-Connected Free-Space Optical Links. Anthony Acampora and Srikanth V. Krishnamurthy in IEEE Personal Communications (now called IEEE Wireless Communications), Vol. 6, No. 5; October 1999.

UniNet: A Hybrid Approach for Universal Broadband Access Using Small Radio Cells Interconnected by Free-Space Optical Links. A. Acampora, S. Krishnamurthy and S. H. Bloom in IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, Vol. 16, No. 6, pages 973¿988; August 1998.

Free-Space Laser Communication Technologies. Special issue of Proceedings of SPIE (published annually).

Anthony Acampora is professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of California, San Diego, where he works on leading-edge telecommunications networking technology. He is also chief scientist and co-founder of AirFiber, a San Diego¿based company that is developing free-space optical technology. Holder of 30 patents, Acampora has performed research at Columbia University and AT&T Bell Laboratories. He received his doctorate in electrical engineering from the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn.

More by Anthony Acampora
Scientific American Magazine Vol 287 Issue 1This article was published with the title “Last Mile by Laser” in Scientific American Magazine Vol. 287 No. 1 ()
doi:10.1038/scientificamerican072002-6jISG4rKNvjSmU8tXr5Cn8

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