| 日期 03 June 2025
March 2025 marked Swabian Instruments’ first time attending the Optical Fiber Communication (OFC) Conference, held in San Francisco at the beginning of this month. OFC brings together experts from across telecom, datacom, integrated photonics, and quantum networking fields to explore advances in high-speed, scalable, and time-sensitive technologies. We were excited to introduce our time-tagging solutions to a broader community working on distributed, low-latency systems, and precision synchronization. We demonstrated the real-time acquisition and analysis of merged data from remotely synchronized Time Taggers. This demo showcased two new software updates, ReferenceClock(). and MultiServerNetwork(), which enable real-time merging of data streams from multiple remote servers.
Remote Synchronization of Time Taggers & Virtual Channels in the GUI. Our newest Software release introduced new features to the Time Tagger platform, including expanded support for White Rabbit (WR) synchronization. For the first time, we demonstrated real-time correlation of data streams originating from multiple remote servers, which were synchronized leveraging WR protocol. This capability is particularly relevant for time-aligned measurements in optical networks, quantum links, and high-throughput diagnostics. It closely ties into initiatives like OFCnet that are enabling remote testbeds and experimental platforms. In this video, one of our application scientists, Mickey Martini, explains this experimental setup, including data merging strategies and multi-server coordination. The upcoming features also include improvements in the UI/UX, VirtualChannels() in the GUI, and the official support of 20 input channels activated in the Time Tagger X!
In parallel to the exhibition, we had the opportunity to attend a series of technical presentations, including but not limited to synchronization in fiber networks, optical time-domain reflectometry (OTDR), timing architectures for 5G, and advances in communication platforms facilitated by LEO (low-Earth orbit) satellite networks. These sessions highlighted the importance of nanosecond/picosecond-level timing resolution in cellular and telephone network diagnostics and satellite-ground communications.
Erhan Sagalamyurek and his team at ESnet showcased a live demo with connected nodes at UC Berkeley and LBNL locations, accessed from the show floor. See more in this LinkedIn post.
Qunnect showed their work on long-distance entanglement distribution in the Berlin testbed, a fantastic progress that Swabian Instruments is looking forward to continuing to support! See more in this LinkedIn post.
On Thursday, we visited the poster session and caught up with Northwestern’s Ely Eastman, who is currently a graduate student in Prof. Prem Kumar’s group at Northwestern University. He presented his research, characterizing a metropolitan fiber link with heralded single photons from an electronic-photonic chip, and leveraging the Time Tagger 20!
Overall, we had a fantastic time at the Optical Fiber Communication (OFC) conference this year in San Francisco. We consider this OFC was a significant step for us in entering the optical communications and networking community. We’re looking forward to seeing everybody next year in Los Angeles!
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