VOL.40 · May 31 · 2018
ETRI will contribute to the economic growth of Korea with research accomplishments in ICT and come closer to the nation’s citizens to ignite their interest in science. ETRI is with the citizens through advanced ICT to realize what is imagined, change the world with ICT, and open a bright future with ICT.
Headline News
ETRI has successfully developed core components for ROADM, an optical switching system that allows explosively increasing optical communication networks to accommodate massive amounts of data and to control such networks intelligently.
In order to develop efficient optical switching systems, researchers at ETRI created core components that can be controlled with software and turned them into equipment to be used for a network. This makes it possible for the components to be utilized in smarter software-defined networking (SDN).
Going forward, this technology will be further refined by a domestic optical device manufacturer to be embedded in optical switching system equipment, which will be fully commercialized by telecommunications service providers.
ETRI participated in NAB Show 2018, the world’s largest exhibition for broadcasting equipment held at Las Vegas Convention Center in Las Vegas, US for four days from April 9 (local time) and introduced its latest broadcasting technology.
With its participation in this world-renowned event this year, ETRI hopes to promote Korea’s prowess in broadcasting, communication, and media technologies and to help Korean broadcasting equipment suppliers preempt the global broadcasting market.
Earlier this year in February, ETRI, in collaboration with NBC of the US, successfully supported live broadcast of the Pyeongchang 2018 Winter Olympic Games in UHD and HD by utilizing the LDM technology based on ATSC 3.0.
ETRI announced that it had successfully transmitted quantum signals (photons) from one of its buildings’ rooftop at a height of over 100m and restored the signals during both night and day by using wireless quantum cryptographic communication technology, a next-generation secure communication technology that can fundamentally eliminate all possibilities of hacking.
This announcement is particularly significant because it indicates that quantum signals can now be successfully restored even during the day when the sunlight is much stronger than the signals. Researchers at ETRI explain that they developed and applied a technology to reduce noise dramatically to bring the quantum bit error rate to below 3% even during the day.
In addition, ETRI successfully developed integrated core components for quantum cryptographic communication that are only several centimeters big and applied such components to relevant systems at the end of 2017. With this, ETRI is considered to have taken one step closer to the components’ commercialization.
Wireless quantum cryptographic communication is anticipated to have many applications for secure communication over national administrative networks, financial networks, cryptographic transmission of military secrets, security of data centers, disaster protection networks, secure services involving personal medical and information, and prevention of vehicle hacking.
On April 20, the Day of the Disabled, ETRI unveiled a meaningful research outcome to the public by announcing that its Knowledge E-Learning Research Group had successfully developed a source technology that converts text in an e-book into speech, and established “SEA Platform” based on this technology as well. This newly developed platform by ETRI allows existing books to be converted into electronic versions that comply with the standard policies for e-books, by connecting all technologies concerned, from a converting tool, publishing tool and reader to a service platform, with one another. It also supports a speech function with its text-to-speech technology. A reader can pause reading or read continuously as well.
Furthermore, the platform enables tables, graphs, and figures on an e-book to be readable by visually impaired readers. ETRI came up with Korean language-specific reading rules, which are used to help the visually impaired better understand visual images included in a book. Currently, numeric expressions and tables at a middle school level can be converted into speech, and ETRI is planning to deliver information from technical texts as well.
