History

This Technology Center was founded in 2008 sponsored by the Project for Developing Innovation Systems of Creation of Innovation Centers for Advanced Interdisciplinary Research Areas Program, Creation of innovation centers for advanced interdisciplinary research areas Program of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. This project is intended to support the creation of innovative R&D centers, designed to achieve significant success in the field of advanced technologies through collaboration with related industries. These centers are ultimately intended to generate a significant impact on the society and economy.

This center was established in the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) and has performed R&D of key technologies and network systems aiming at optical networks with ultra-low energy consumption by collaboration with NTT Network Innovation Laboratories, Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd., Furukawa Electric Co., Ltd., Trimatiz Ltd., and NEC Corporation. Based on the R&D achievements, demonstration experiments on optical path network were successfully performed in August 2010. Extremely large volume data consisting of ultra-high-definition video signals were transmitted through the network for long distance in cooperation with NICT and NHK.

In 2010, the activity of this center was reexamined by a government committee and selected as an important challenge to be promoted at higher level from FY2011. It was determined that the R&D activity of this center is promoted as a project of the Promotion of Science and Technology with Regional Collaboration of Industry, Academia and Government.

In accordance with this decision, the industry-academia-government collaboration has been enlarged by new member participations since FY2011 in addition to five ongoing collaborating companies. The new members are Fujitsu Limited, Hitachi Cable, Ltd., Fujikura Ltd., Alnair Labs Corporation and Sumitomo Electric Industries, Ltd. In FY2013 Kitanihon Electric Cable Co.,Ltd. participated, succeeding Hitachi Cable, Ltd. By close collaboration with these 10 companies we will perform vertically integrated R&D of technologies from device level to network architecture level aiming at extreme lowering of the energy consumption in optical network. We will focus on the development of a new network system promising a dramatic reduction in electric power consumption which shows remarkable increase with information and communications explosion. We sincerely look forward to your further support and cooperation to this important project.

Collaborating companies