History
Founding of SM-Optics
In 2014 the labs for the management system for terrestrial networks and two families of equipment for fiber optic telecommunications—OMSN (Optical Multi-Service Node) and TSS (Transport Service Switch)— were transferred from Alcatel Lucent (now Nokia) to a new dedicated company, SM Optics, a subsidiary of SIAE Microelettronica.
From 2014 to 2016, through its entirely owned company "Twist-off" in Padua (Italy), Siae Microelettronica was active in researching applications of Orbital Angular Momentum of light (OAM) communications applied to long-distance links. Field tests of the principles were also published and filed under an industrial patent based on the twisted parabola. As a means to increase capacity and frequency reuse orbital angular momentum multiplexing was also compared to traditional MIMO spatial multiplexing techniques in terms of antenna size/spacing/occupation and achievable performance, which resulted in a critical assessment showing that both have equal performances. Near field properties of OAM beams at microwaves have also been investigated resulting in valid theoretical and practical demonstrations to lay the ground for short-range secure communications with application to contactless payments and transactions, filed under a dedicated patent.
The company continues its long standing cooperation strategy with research institutions and in 2015 it joined the Laurea Magistrale Plus program, promoted by University of Pavia for Master's degree achieved with an extended and close participation in existing companies' activities.
In 2016 the company presented, at the Mobile World Congress, Layer-3 VPN services over microwave radio links using SM-OS, based on Software-defined networking (SDN).
In 2016, an internal team of researchers coauthored the "Receiver", "Modem" and "Antenna" chapters in a comprehensive book describing electronic design of transceiver frontends for backhauling.