"Not all researchers have the luck and merit to see their ideas and studies have an impact on millions of people in such a short timeframe. At the age of 33, Massimiliano Salsi can rightfully say that AMX-1, the 17,500 km optical cable recently laid at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean by French telecommunication giant Alcatel-Lucent, together with America Movil, the Mexican and 4th technical advances which are the direct outcome of his research: the cable, the first specifically designed for 100Gbps transmission rate, brings high-speed data services, with premium applications ranging from HD cable TV, TV streaming and, of course, high-speed download to millions of existing and new users in 6 countries of Central and South America, not just to America Movil's direct customers, but to other operators willing to benefit from state-of-the-art connectivity services with the US.
A young Italian engineer, Salsi joined Alcatel-Lucent straight after his PhD, and now leads their Optical Transmission research group. The focus of his research was the elaboration of new coherent detection algorithms for the correct modulation and demodulation of the optical signal even at great distances: an optical cable consists of millions of beams of polarized light carrying the modulated message and travelling through its length, bouncing back and forth from one side of the crystal cable to the other, and finally received and decoded at the other end. The imperfections of the cable cause distortions within the signal, with a greater, negative effect as distance and bit rate increase. So far, a transmission rate of up to 40 Gbps had been possible, and for shorter distances only: over long, transoceanic distances, up to 10 Gbps was the state-of-the-art. AMX-1 therefore represent a 10-fold improvement and to make it possible, the new coherent detection algorithms invented by Massimiliano were adopted,exactly as similar algorithms were implemented in 2012 in another submarine cable called JONAH, this time lying at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea between Italy and Israel, which allows up to 40 Gbps transmission.
If JONAH and AMX-1 are astonishing results representing reality at this very moment in time, more can be dreamt of in the future, thanks to Massimiliano's applied research. In a 2009 test, he and his team demonstrated that it is possible to achieve the fantascientific result of 100 thousand Terabits per second, that is a million times higher speed than AMX-1 over a 7,000 Km distance. The quest for higher and higher transmission rate continues, and Salsi's new algorithms will certainly find an ever growing application."
