UK and Japan join forces in H2020-funded high-speed data project

The European Commission has awarded €1.5m of Horizon 2020 funding for an international project developing new technologies to support high-speed data networks.

The SAFARI (Scalable And Flexible optical Architecture for Reconfigurable Infrastructure) project is a collaboration between the UK’s University of Southampton and the Japanese Government. Researchers from the university’s Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC) will share the EU funding with Coriant GmbH and the Technical University of Denmark. The project also involves Japanese-based firms Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT) and Fujikura Ltd. The project marks the university’s first receipt of Horizon 2020 funding.

Speaking about the new project, Professor David Richardson, deputy director of the ORC, commented: “We are delighted to be engaged in the exciting and ambitious project which brings together leading European and Japanese research groups to address some of the key emerging challenges and opportunities facing our increasingly information-centric global society.”

Scientists will investigate how to build future high-speed networks capable of delivering data connections of at least 400Gbps/channel in densely populated user areas. Research will combine state-of-the-art, multi-core optical fibres with Space-Division Multiplexing networks to produce highly scalable and flexible optical transport networks.