LightPointe Honors Chief Scientist and Optical Wireless Innovator’s 80th Birthday

June 18, 2012

Dr. Erhard Kube

LightPointe, a manufacturer of point-to-point gigabit-capacity wireless FSO bridges and 60-GHz small cell and 80-GHz backhaul radios for broadband transmission, is honoring its chief scientist, on his 80th birthday this month, and for his contributions in optical wireless transmission. Kube is regarded as the father of optical wireless transmission technology. His career spans more than 50 years and has been dedicated to optical communications and data transmission innovation since the early 1960s, Dr. Heinz Willebrand, LightPointe’s CEO, told Backhaul Bulletin.

Kube has been with LightPointe since the company’s founding in 1998 and has been its chief scientist since 2000. His study of the transmission of light through the atmosphere has led to today’s fourth-generation free-space optics wireless bridges, which are the fastest point-to-point data transmission technology. They provide up to 99.999 percent availability and enable laser-precise secure delivery of data.

According to Willebrand, Kube’s discoveries have led to many of the products used to interconnect high-speed networks for businesses, schools, military, security applications and 4G/LTE mobile telecom backhaul. Innovations in optical fiber and optical wireless networks enable the broadband connections and telecom services, which make it possible to use bandwidth- intensive devices such as laptops, smart phones and tablets, as well as IP video streaming services such as Netflix and video conferencing.

“As Dr. Kube celebrates his 80th birthday this month, and during an especially exciting time of growth for us with revenue up 42 percent this year, it reminds all of us at LightPointe of his contributions to our company,” said Willebrand in a company statement.

Willebrand told the Bulletin that the time for optical communications is much better now than it was 10 to 15 years ago. “Dr. Kube has made quite a contribution in this space to make optical communications much more reliable,” he said.