From Millibits to Terabits per Second and Beyond -- over 60 Years of Innovation

Prof. Renuka P. Jindal, President of the IEEE Electron Devices Society, provides a sweeping view of the history of modern wireless and optical networks. As described in Moore's Law, circuit complexity (e.g. in transistors per square cm) has been doubling every 24 months. Communication bandwidth has doubled every 18 months. This meteoric increase was enabled by three key developments: (a) the demonstration of the point-contact bipolar transistor in 1947 by Bardeen, Brattain and Shockley, which started the solid-state revolution, (b) the development of Information Theory as enunciated by Claude Shannon in 1948, and (c) the invention of laser by Schawlow and Townes in 1958. Serious efforts to develop high-performance lightwave systems incorporating integrated electronics with MOS technology began around 1980. Prof. Jindal, who contributed to the ultimate success of this approach, describes the progress of understanding and improvements in performance that have led to cost-effective lightwave and now low-cost wireless terminals (e.g. cellphones).