Dec 24 2010
Raytheon BBN Technologies has received a $2.1 million contract to advance imaging systems and optical communications under the Information in a Photon (InPho) program. DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) had provided the funds to execute the project.
The objective of the projects is to develop new experimental methods and theory to allow the operation of imaging systems and optical communications at their maximum information encoding efficiency levels.
PIECOMM (Photon Information Efficient Communications), the first project, focuses to develop methods that maximize the optical communications technology’s current limits when reaching the maximum limits of photon information efficacy.
As part of the first project, Raytheon BBN Technologies will develop and show experimental solutions including adaptive joint-detection receivers and multiple-spatial-mode design. These solutions would achieve communications at 5-bits/sec/Hz and 10-bits per photon while encoding information in time and space simultaneously.
FINESSE (Fundamental Information Capacity of Electromagnetism with Squeezing and Spatial Entanglement), the second project, focuses on determining the limits of theoretical performance in imaging technology with respect to the laws of quantum physics.
Raytheon BBN Technologies and the University of Virginia will partner to carry out an investigation on newly designed quantum states of light. The program will open up new technology in the far and near field of imaging.