The Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC) at the University of Southampton in the UK,

1. A university-based research group devoted to optoelectronics for over four decades.

2. Operating in multidisciplinary mode in the fields of optical fibres, lasers, waveguides, devices and optoelectronic materials.

3. Whose technology base has generated several spin out companies, including SPI Lasers, Stratophase, Fibercore and ChG Southampton.

Has announced the commencement of a European research program called PHASORS (PHase Sensitive Amplifier Systems and Optical Regenerators and their applicationS), a Euro 3.9 million R&D project funded under the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) theme of the 7th Framework program of the European Union (FP7).

The project is aiming to deliver technology and components with the potential to substantially improve the transmission capacity and energy efficiency of today's optical communication networks, including:

1. High power narrow line-width sources and nonlinear fibre gain media.

2. Technology to phase lock an incoming optical signal to either single or multiple pump beams.

3. Technology to overcome unwanted nonlinear effects.

4. The use of these technologies and components in "beyond NGN" system demonstrators as well as the development of novel T&M equipment.

5. Use of the technology in a range of other application areas, including sensing, aerospace, metrology, quantum communications and medicine.

Led by Professor David Richardson of the ORC, PHASORS is supported by experts in non-linear optics and signal processing from academia and industry:

1. Chalmers University of Technology at Gothenburg, Sweden.

2. Tyndall National Institute at University College Cork, Ireland.

3. The National and Kapodestrian University of Athens.

4. Onefive GmbH of Zurich, Switzerland, a specialist in packaging technology combining fibre, solid-state and semiconductor technologies.

5. Eblana Photonics of Dublin, Ireland, a specialist in high performance lasers.

6. OFS Denmark of Priorparken, Brøndby, a specialist in custom optical fibres.

The EU project officer for PHASORS, John Magan, said, "...in addition to direct forefront technical demonstrations of phase sensitive amplifiers, the components developed within PHASORS can potentially be widely applied in other ICT projects and beyond in future networks".