RESEARCH AREAS

The Optical Technology Research Laboratory at Universiti Utara Malaysia, led by Assoc.  Prof.  Dr. Angela Amphawan spearheads research in novel designs for next-generation computing and telecommunication systems. Light traveling through optical fiber and free-space optical interconnects accelerates information transfer and has the capability of digital processing of complex mathematical functions and algorithms at a rate faster than electricity, with less energy.  Intel, IBM, Fujitsu, Infinera and Facebook have developed various hardware and algorithms for optical computing systems. Conventional electronic computers have limitations in data rates and energy dissipation, thus, light is now replacing electrons for transferring information. The holistic deployment of high-speed optical signal processing and information management architecture is a disruptive technology that will potentially meet the unquenchable demand for faster data analytics.  We envisage to seamlessly interface existing and future computing systems by bringing together diverse expertise and industry leaders for the creation and commercialization of related industrial applications.   Optical computing is valuable for highly processor-intensive tasks in fields such as big data analytics, Internet-of-Things, bioinformatics, weather forecasting and disaster prediction, field-programmable gate arrays, security and manufacturing. The slide on the right shows our group's main research areas.