Sophia Magazine vol.1 / SUMMER 2015

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10cables is increasing day by day,” Professor Takahashi ex-plains. “Especially, after the year 2000, many more people started using the internet and the volume of information transmitted increased rapidly. Compared to the volume in the 1980s, when the telephone was the primary means of transmitting information, the volume of information trans-mitted via optical ber cables has increased 100,000 times.” The research on optical ber communications has been a relentless pursuit to improve communication speed over the last 30 years. Among several methods available for doing this, the method that Professor Takahashi is working on is called wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM). “To im-prove the information transmission speed, it is necessary to Since optical ber cables are laid underground or on the seabed, we rarely get a chance to see them. An optical ber communication network, however, is an essential part of the infrastructure of an information-based society, just like water, gas, and electricity services. Optical ber cables underpin all kinds of information communication services, from landline phones to smartphones, internet communica-tion services, TV transmissions, as well as online banking systems. “The volume of information transmitted via optical ber Developer of ElementUsed to Sustain the InternetProfessor Hiroshi Takahashi, who became a professor at So-phia University in April 2013 at the Department of Informa-tion and Communication Sciences in the Faculty of Science and Technology, is in charge of research and development of a fundamental technology of optical ber communications. The purpose of this research is to increase the communication speed and volume of information transmitted via optical ber. To achieve this, Professor Takahashi succeeded in developing on a single chip optical waveguide gratings, which are indispens-able to wavelength-division multiplexing. For this achieve-ment, the professor was elevated to Fellow at the IEEE in 2014 and received the Commendation for Science and Technology from the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology in 2015.Single-Chip Dispersive ElementDramatically Improves the TransmissionSpeed of Optical CommunicationsResearch