An optical communications technology roadmap leading up to the second decade of the 21st century has been investigated to provide a future vision of the optoelectronic technology in 15 to 20 years. The process whereby technology may progress toward the realization of the vision is indicated. A transmission rate of 100 Mbps for homes and a rate of 5 Tbps for the backbone network will be required in the first decade of the 21 century. Two technology roadmaps for public and business communications networks are discussed. It is concluded both WDM and TDM technology will be required to realize such an ultra-high capacity transmission. Technical tasks for various optical devices are investigated in detail.

A method for measuring the magnetic field strength for human exposure assessment closer than 20cm to wireless power transfer (WPT) systems for information household appliances is investigated based on numerical simulations and measurements at 100kHz and 6.78MHz. Four types of magnetic sources are considered: a simple 1-turn coil and three types of coils simulating actual WPT systems. A magnetic sensor whose cross sectional area is 100cm2 as prescribed in International Electrotechnical Commission 62233 is used. Simulation results show that the magnetic field strength detected by the magnetic sensor is affected by its placement angle. The maximum coefficient of variation (CV) is 27.2% when the magnetic source and the sensor are in contact. The reason for this deviation is attributable to the localization of the magnetic field distribution around the magnetic source. The coupling effect between the magnetic source and the sensor is negligible. Therefore, the sensor placement angle is an essential factor in magnetic field measurements. The CV due to the sensor placement angle is reduced from 21% to 4% if the area of the sensor coil is reduced from 100 to 0.75cm2 at 6.78MHz. However, the sensitivity of the sensor coil is decreased by 42.5dB. If measurement uncertainty that considers the deviation in the magnetic field strength due to the sensor placement angle is large, the measured magnetic field strength should be corrected by the uncertainty. If the magnetic field distribution around the magnetic source is known, conservative exposure assessments can be achieved by placing the magnetic sensor in locations at which the spatial averaged magnetic field strengths perpendicular to the magnetic sensor coils become maximum.

We review the role of optics in interconnects, analog processing, neural networks, and digital computing. The properties of low interference, massively parallel interconnections, and very high data rates promise extremely high performance for optical information processing systems.

We review the role of optics in interconnects, analog processing, neural networks, and digital computing. The properties of low interference, massively parallel interconnections, and very high data rates promise extremely high performance for optical information processing systems.