Dr. Ira Jacobs Professor Office: 360 Whittemore Mailing Address: 302 Whittemore (0111) Virginia Tech Blacksburg, VA 24061 Tel: (540) 231-5620 Fax: (540) 231-3362 Email:

Biography

Ira Jacobs received a B.S. from the City College of New York in 1950, and M.S.  and Ph.D. degrees in Physics from Purdue University in 1952 and 1955. He joined Bell Laboratories in 1955, was promoted to Supervisor in 1960, Department Head in 1962, and Director in 1967. He directed the development of AT&T’s early fiber optic communication systems and was elected an IEEE Fellow in 1981  “for contributions to and leadership in the development of lightwave communication systems.” He joined Virginia Tech in 1987 as Professor of Electrical Engineering and a member of the Fiber and Electro-Optics Research Center. Dr. Jacobs served as Interim Head of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department in 1994-95.  He initiated a graduate course in Optical Fiber Communication, and a senior elective in Telecommunication Networks. He has taught a broad range of courses in communications and fiber optics, and has presented short courses in fiber optics at professional conferences and company locations. Dr. Jacobs was a member of the Scientific & Industrial Advisory Committee (S&IAC) of the Telecommunications Research Institute of Ontario (TRIO) from 1990 to1993, and was its Chairman in 1993. He was appointed to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Technological Advisory Council in 2003, and reappointed in 2005.

Research Areas

• Fiber optic communication system performance, architecture, and technology
• Modulation and detection techniques to combat non-linearities and dispersion
• Interfaces between fiber optic and wireless networks
• Broadband access technologies ands applications

Selected Publications

• Ira Jacobs and Seemant Teotia, “Bounds on the Power and Spectral Efficiency of Optical Fiber Communication Systems,” Proc. SPIE, vol. 6012, Optical Transmission Systems and Equipment for WDM Networking IV, pp. 150-158, 2005.
• Daniel Tebben and Ira Jacobs, “Coherent Detection Techniques to Eliminate Phase Error and Power Fading in Optical Subcarrier Systems,” Proc. SPIE, vol. 6012, Optical Transmission Systems and Equipment for WDM Networking IV, pp. 159-166, 2005.
• V. Wongpaibool, J.K. Shaw, and Ira Jacobs, “Comparison of Alternative Carrier-Suppressed Return-to-Zero Modulation Formats,” Proceedings of SPIE, Optical Transmission Systems and equipment for Networking II, vol. 5247, pp. 284-298, September 2003.
• Surachet Kanprachar and Ira Jacobs, “Diversity coding for sub-carrier multiplexing on multimode fibers,” IEEE Trans. Commun., Vol. 51, No. 9, pp. 1546-1553, September 2003.
• Ira Jacobs and J.K. Shaw, “Optimal Dispersion Precompensation by Pulse Chirping,”Applied Optics, Vol. 41, No. 6, pp. 1057-1062, Feb. 20, 2002.
• Ira Jacobs, “Optical Fiber Communication Technology and System Overview,” Chapter 2 in Optical Society of America Handbook of Optics, Volume 4, Fiber Optics and Nonlinear Optics, 2nd Edition, McGraw Hill, 2001.
• M. Brandt-Pearce, Ira Jacobs, J.-H. Lee, and J.K. Shaw, “Optimal input Gaussian pulse width for transmission in dispersive nonlinear fibers,” J. Opt. Soc. Am. B, vol. 16, no. 8., 1189-1196, August 1999.
• Vivek Arya and Ira Jacobs, “Optical Preamplifier Receiver for Spectrum-Sliced WDM,” Journal of Lightwave Technology, vol. 15, no. 4, 576-583, April 1997.
• Ira Jacobs, “Dependence of Optical Amplifier Noise Figure on Relative-Intensity Noise,” J. Lightwave Technol., vol. 13, no. 7, pp. 1461-1465, July 1995.
• Frank Cheng, Paul Lemson, Jeffrey Reed, and Ira Jacobs, “A Dynamic Range Enhancement Technique for Fiber Optic Microcell Radio Systems,” 1995 IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference, Chicago, IL, June 1995.