Telescent Inc. Awarded A U.S. Department of Energy SBIR Phase II Research Grant To Develop An RFID Overlay Network Which Tracks Fiber Optic Connections In Cloud Computing And Telecom Centers

Online, February 8, 2011 (Newswire.com) - Telescent has been awarded a $1M U.S. Department of Energy Phase II Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) grant to develop an automated network management system enabling configuration management and tracking down to the level of individual fiber optical connections. Fiber optic and copper cable connections are augmented by a distributed network of electronically traceable RFID tags attached to the ports of all network devices within a facility. The connectivity between all network devices can be determined electronically by utilizing a unique RFID readout approach based on resonant electrical transmission lines integral with fiber optic patch-cords and cables. This distributed system promises improvements in the operational efficiency, performance, agility and reliability of networks.

The automation of basic yet essential network management tasks translates to improved network operations efficiency and availability. The highly manual nature of current network management and maintenance approaches demands a fleet of some 200,000 service vehicles in the U.S. alone and reduces the profitability, reliability and agility of high bandwidth communications services. The cost to operate today's networks exceeds 60% of the carriers' revenue and the staffing costs to manage data centers exceed $250B per year alone. Automation enables networks of all sizes to be managed in a software-driven and remote-controlled fashion, for unprecedented operational efficiency.

About Telescent Inc.

Telecom and datacom facilities are the "factories" of today's information age, housing thousands to millions of fiber optic cables, interconnected in an often haphazard fashion to route digital data between massive numbers of high-speed switches, routers, servers and storage devices. The management and maintenance of these complex networks, and the cables linking these devices, requires labor intensive manual processes and compromises reliability. In light of the emerging scaling challenges, Telescent has developed robotic fiber optic cross-connect systems that automate the management of fiber optic connections to enable "remote control" of today's growing networks. The resulting acceleration of provisioning, improved equipment utilization and increase in network availability offer a significant competitive advantage to network operators of data centers, collocation facilities and FTTH networks.

Telescent Inc., located in Marina Del Rey, California, was founded in 2008 by Dr. Anthony Kewitsch and Prof. Amnon Yariv of the California Institute of Technology. Telescent has developed a portfolio of network automation technologies represented by about 20 awarded and pending patents. Telescent's 1008x1008 port automated interconnect will be on exhibition on March 8-10, in booth #2741 at the OFC/NFOEC 2011 show in Los Angeles, California.