Telenor's Nordic Research Award 2000 has been given to the Swedish professor Peter Andrekson for groundbreaking work and original results within optical technology. The award money of NOK 250,000 was handed over on 22 June in Sandefjord. The award winner works at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg.

The Jury's grounds for selection:
The subject for this year's Nordic Research Award from Telenor was "Enabling technologies for advanced ICT systems and services". The candidates represented a wide spectre within this area, from Internet technology and software to radio systems and solid-state microelectronics, and several of them showed impressive qualifications relating to the criteria for awarding this prize. This year the Jury would have liked to award more than one prize but still managed to unanimously agree on a winner.

In the course of an incredibly short time Peter Andrekson has managed to carry out groundbreaking work in several areas of a rapidly growing field, which may be decisive for establishing the necessary capacity in the communications networks. In the last few years we have seen a growth in the Internet and a demand for capacity increasingly driven by people taking to the World Wide Web services. There is also a trend towards convergence of content in traditional broadcasting services and data- and telecom services. This will inevitably lead to a need to transfer video and large data files to a degree not previously known. It is the opinion of the Jury that this will influence greatly on both our business and private lives in a few years.

This year's winner has been awarded the prize for his efforts within optical technology. There is great potential for transmitting information along optical fibres. 100 Tbit/s is a figure that has been given for the theoretical capacity limit, or in laymen's terms - a capacity similar to the transmission of some 20 million TV channels.

As of today only 1 - 3 % of the theoretical transmission potential on optical fibres has been utilised, but this development has accelerated tremendously over the past few years. Furthermore we are seeing the beginning of increasingly more information flows on fibre being switched and routed in all-optical components, with the consequences that entails for capacity and economy in complete networks.

Peter Andrekson is aged 40, and during a relatively short career he has worked within several areas of the optical field. He has supplied groundbreaking work especially within wavelength multiplexing, all-optical switching and data manipulation and high-speed optical transmission. Some of his original results have been characterisation of laser diodes, the first experimental study of wavelength multiplexing combined with soliton transmission, spanning distances of up to 10,000 kilometres, all-optical demultiplexing of high-speed optical signals down to levels that can be handled electronically (from 64 Gbit/s to 4 Gbit/s), and lately a record entailing the transfer of 80 Gbit/s over 172 kilometres on an installed commercial fibre, and on one wavelength, which was then demultiplexed to 10 Gbit/s all-optical.

Professor Peter Andrekson has produced an impressive list of publications and enjoys a high regard in the international professional environment of his field. He is currently heading a group which is very active in contributing to new results within optical technology.