Professor Arthur James Lowery

BSc (Hons) Dunelm, PhD (Nottingham), Fellow IEEE, Fellow IET, Fellow ATSE (Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering)

Head, Department of Electrical and Computer Systems Engineering, Monash University, Clayton

Science Leader, CUDOS - Terabit/s Devices and Systems Project

Project Leader, Monash Vision Group - Bionic Eye

CTO, Ofidium Pty Ltd (www.ofidium.com)

Recent Grants:

  • January 2011: Australian Research Council, Centres of Excellence Program - Centre for Ultrabroadband Optical Devices and Systems CUDOS with The University of Sydney, ANU, Macquarie Univ., Swinburne Univ. of Technology, RMIT and UTS $23.5M
    • I am the Science Leader in the Terabit per Second Photonic Devices and Systems Project. We are looking for postdoc researchers and students in photonic systems, experimentalists in high-speed photonic systems using combinations of electronics and photonics for information processing, and photonic device designers. Scholarships are available to suitable candidates.
  • December 2009: Australian Research Council, Special Research Initiative: "Direct stimulation of the visual cortex: a flexible strategy for restoring high-acuity pattern vision" - , Bionic Eye $8M (Arthur Lowery, Marcello Rosa, Jeffrey Rosenfeld, Rajan Ramesh, Kate Smith Miles, Lindsay Kleeman, John Forsythe, Ben Adler, Julian Rood, Anthony Hall, Nemai Karmakar, Wai Ho Li, Erol Harvey, Jean-Michel Redoute)
    • I direct this project. We are seeking researchers and students in: electronic systems (analog and digital), vision algorithms, electrode design, biocompatibility, the human visual pathway, physiology and related areas. Scholarships are available to suitable candidates.
  • November 2009: Australian Research Council, Discovery Project: "Next-Generation Optical OFDM for Long-Haul Telecommunications: Building on Recent Research and Commercialisation Success" $450k (Applicant: Arthur James Lowery)
    • I am the sole investigator on this project. I am looking for students and postdoc researchers in optical (photonic) circuit simulation and experimentation to design, build, and understand the next generation of telecommunications equipment designs.

Recent Prizes and Honours:

  • January 2009, Elected as a Fellow of the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, USA) for "leadership in computer modelling of optical communication systems"
  • November 2007, Elected to be a Fellow ATSE (Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering) (Press Release)
  • April 2007: Clunies Ross Award “For excellence in the application of science and technology, for the economic benefit of Australia>”, awarded by the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering (ATSE)
  • June 2006: Peter Doherty Prize for Innovation (with Jean Armstrong and Leonore Ryan). Awarded $100,000 for “Faster Optical Communications – Optical Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing” at Commercialization Expo, Melbourne, 2006. We also won the ICT Prize and the ANZA Technology Award at the same event.

2011 Publications:

  • A. J. Lowery and Liang Du, “All-optical OFDM transmitter design using AWGRs and low-bandwidth modulators” Accepted subject to revisions, Optics Express, June 2011
  • Yi Hong, Arthur Lowery, Emanuele Viterbo, "Subcarrier Pairing For Direct-Detection Optical OFDM Systems" Accepted for presentation at the European Conference on Optical Communications (ECOC2011), Geneva, Sept. 2011, Session OFDM III, paper Th.11.B.2
  • Liang Du, A. J. Lowery, “Experimental demonstration of pilot-based XPM nonlinearity compensator for CO-OFDM systems,” European Conference on Optical Communications (ECOC2011), Geneva, Sept. 2011, Session OFDM III, paper Th.11.B.4
  • A. J. Lowery and Liang B. Du, "Optical Orthogonal Division Multiplexing for Long Haul Optical Communications: A review of the last five years" An invited review article for Optical Fiber Telecommunications (Ed. M. Chbat). To be published 2011
  • Liang B. Du and A.J. Lowery, "Optimizing the subcarrier granularity of coherent optical communications systems," Opt. Express 19, 8079-8084 (2011) http://www.opticsinfobase.org/oe/abstract.cfm?URI=oe-19-9-8079
  • Liang B. Du and A. J. Lowery, “No-guard-interval coherent optical OFDM with self-tuning receiver,” Opt. Express 19, 2181-2186 (2011) http://www.opticsinfobase.org/oe/abstract.cfm?URI=oe-19-3-2181
  • Liang B. Du and A. J. Lowery, "Pilot-based cross-phase modulation compensation for coherent optical orthogonal frequency division multiplexing long-haul optical communications systems," Opt. Lett. 36, 1647-1649 (2011) http://www.opticsinfobase.org/ol/abstract.cfm?URI=ol-36-9-1647
  • Liang B. Du and A. J. Lowery, “Experimental demonstration of XPM compensation for CO-OFDM Systems with periodic dispersion maps,” Optical Fiber Communications 2011, Los Angeles, CA, Overall winner of the Corning Outstanding Student Paper Award 2011

2010 Publications:

  • Liang B. Du and A. J. Lowery, "Mitigation of Dispersion Penalty for Short-Cyclic-Prefix Coherent Optical OFDM Systems " European Conference on Optical Communications (ECOC 2010), Torino, Italy, Sept. 2010 paper Tu.4.A.5
  • Liang B. Du and A. J. Lowery, "Improved single channel backpropagation for intra-channel fiber nonlinearity compensation in long-haul optical communication systems," Opt. Express 18, 17075-17088 (2010) http://www.opticsinfobase.org/oe/abstract.cfm?URI=oe-18-16-17075
  • Liang B. Du and Arthur J. Lowery, "Practical XPM Compensation Method for Coherent Optical OFDM systems" Photonics Technology Letters, vol. 22(5), pp.320-322, (2009)
  • A. J. Lowery, "Design of arrayed-waveguide grating routers for use as optical OFDM demultiplexers," Opt. Express 18, 14129-14143 (2010) http://www.opticsinfobase.org/oe/abstract.cfm?URI=oe-18-13-14129
  • Dung Dai Tran and A. J. Lowery, “SPM mitigation in 16-ary amplitude-and-differential-phase shift keying long-haul optical transmission systems” Opt. Express 18, 7790-7797 (2010). (ISI Impact: 3.709) http://www.opticsinfobase.org/oe/abstract.cfm?URI=oe-18-8-7790
  • B.J.C. Schmidt, Z. Zan, L. B. Du and A.J. Lowery, “120 Gbit/s Over 500-km Using Single-Band Polarization-Multiplexed Self-Coherent Optical OFDM”, J. Lightwave Technology, vol. 28 (4), pp. 328-335 (2010)
  • Liang B. Du and Arthur J.Lowery, "Compensating XPM for 100 Gbit/s Coherent Channels with 10 Gbit/s Direct-Detection NRZ Neighbors," Optical Fiber Communications (OFC 2010), 23rd March 2010, San Diego, CA, paper OTuE7
  • Liang B. Du, Brendon J. C. Schmidt, and Arthur J. Lowery, "Efficient Digital Backpropagation for PDM-CO-OFDM Optical Transmission Systems", Optical Fiber Communications (OFC 2010), 23rd March 2010, San Diego, CA, paper OTuE2
  • Zuraidah Zan and A. J. Lowery, "Experimental demonstration of a flexible and stable semiconductor laser linewidth emulator," Opt. Express 18, 13880-13885 (2010) http://www.opticsinfobase.org/oe/abstract.cfm?URI=oe-18-13-13880
  • Zuraidah Zan, Liang B. Y. Du, and Arthur J. Lowery, "Experimental Demonstration on the Reduction of Linewidth Impact in a Self-Heterodyne Optical OFDM System", Optical Fiber Communications (OFC 2010), 25th March 2010, San Diego, CA, paper JThA8

2009 Publications:

Papers on noise and its mitigation for optical OFDM systems (and a full paper on our experimental demonstrations):

Earlier papers on fiber nonlinearity and its compensation for optical OFDM systems:

Invited Papers and Keynote Speeches

  • A. J. Lowery "Optical Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing: the story so far....", Keynote Speech, International Symposium on Global Optical Infrastructure Technologies towards the Next Decades (A New Horizon of Innovations in Optical Communications Technologies), Wed 12th Nov. 2008, organised by NiCT, Tokyo, Japan
  • A. J. Lowery "Electronic Dispersion Compensation and Optical OFDM", Keynote Speech, opening of Malaysia Photonics 2008, Kuala Lumpar, Malaysia, August 2008.
  • A. J. Lowery, "Optical OFDM," Invited Talk, Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics (CLEO 2008), San Jose, May 2008, paper CWN1
  • Invited Tutorial at ECOC 2007 (Berlin): Adaptation of Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing, OFDM, to Compensate Impairments in Optical Transmission Systems

Early experimental results for direct-detection OFDM for long-haul systems:

Early Long-Haul Optical OFDM Papers

Arthur Lowery is an engineer, innovator and educator with a proven success record transforming ground breaking technical innovations into successful international businesses. His core competencies in management of research and development, communications technology, intellectual property management, export marketing, and innovative teaching. He has a proven track record launching Australian businesses in US and Europe , and has extensive contacts in the global scientific and technical business communities.

Arthur built the global Photonic Design Automation (PDA) industry from his fundamental research in semiconductor laser modeling (see http://www.vpiphotonics.com ). In 1996 he founded Virtual Photonics Pty Ltd (later Inc) with Phil Gurney, to commercialise OPALS, a software tool for designing optical communications devices and circuits. In 1997 GOLD was launched to an enthusiastic and rapidly-growing market. GOLD (Gigabit Optical Link Designer) was developed in a joint project with Telstra and the University of Melbourne. Phil and Arthur merged Virtual Photonics Inc with BNeD Inc, a competitor out of the Heinrich Hertz Institute (Berlin) that had obtained government funding and VC money, to form VPI Virtual Photonics Inc in late 1998 (known in the industry as VPI). VPI has grown by technology acquisition and internal development to be the leading supplier of design tools for communication components, systems and networks (see www.vpisystems.com and www.vpiphotonics.com ). VPI boasts 150 corporations as customers and VPI’s software tools are used by over 130 universities for research and teaching. Over 1000 scientific papers cite VPI as thewir suimulation tool. Free software tools are available for teaching at http://www.vpiphotonics.com/VPIplayer.php.

Arthur was appointed Chair of Electrical and Computer Systems Engineering, at Monash University (15 km SE of Melbourne City) in September 2004 ( www.ecse.monash.edu.au)

In 2008, Arthur founded Ofidium Pty Ltd, (www.ofidium.com) which secured A$6M of funding in March 2009 (Press Release).

His research interests include:

Arthur's pre-2008 publications list can be found here (with downloads).

Arthur is currently seeking PhD students to help create new global industries from high-tech research. He can be contacted at Arthur.lowery@eng.monash.edu.au

Just for fun: hear what lasers and optical systems sound like!

Arthur has transposed the outputs of computer simulations into audio files. These reveal the fascinating spectral dynamics of lasers and systems.

The simulations were 'performed' using VPIsystems' VPItransmissionMaker and VPIcomponentMaker products. VPIcomponentMaker is based on Arthur's early work on time-domain modeling of semiconductor lasers (the Transmission Line Laser Model, TLLM), which is widely used for active photonic circuit design and is often called the time-domain model of lasers.