RF & Photonics at IIT Madras

In 2000 - 2001, the board of Governors, IITM had agreed to set-up Center for Intelligent Optical Networks at IIT Madras, using the seed money from Dr.Gururaj Deshpande who had committed to fund the initiative. This centre was then expanded to include RF communications under the broader umbrella of the Deshpande Centre for Communications, in the Department of Electrical Engineering.

Work in the area of RF and Photonics falls into 3 broad categories

  1. Devices and Components - Integrated optoelectronics, Fibre Bragg Gratings (FBGs), Plasmonics, Optical MEMS, quantum sensing
  2. Subsystems - Optoelectronic devices, mixed signal electronics and microwave photonics
  3. Networks - Communication networks, both at a physical layer and the implementation of algorithms and protocols at the service layer, along with advanced encryption schemes using quantum key distribution.
  4. RF systems - Radar signal processing, satellite imagery, microwave magnetics

There are currently 10 faculty and over 70 staff and students working on different areas in photonics. In addition to teaching laboratories, we have reseach laboratories that focus on experiments in RF and Photonics.

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