Heinrich Hertz Institute
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The Fraunhofer Institute for Telecommunications, Heinrich Hertz Institute, HHI, also known as Fraunhofer HHI or Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute, is an organization of the
Fraunhofer Society The Fraunhofer Society (german: Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der angewandten Forschung e.V., lit=Fraunhofer Society for the Advancement of Applied Research) is a German research organization with 76institutes spread throughout Germany ...
based in Berlin. The institute engages in applied research and development in the fields of
physics Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which r ...
, electrical engineering and
computer sciences Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to practical disciplines (including ...
.


Competencies

The Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute develops mobile and stationary
broadband In telecommunications, broadband is wide bandwidth data transmission which transports multiple signals at a wide range of frequencies and Internet traffic types, that enables messages to be sent simultaneously, used in fast internet connections. ...
communication networks and multimedia systems. Focal points of independent and contract research conducted by Fraunhofer HHI are photonic components and systems,
fiber optic An optical fiber, or optical fibre in Commonwealth English, is a flexible, transparent fiber made by drawing glass (silica) or plastic to a diameter slightly thicker than that of a human hair. Optical fibers are used most often as a means t ...
sensor systems, and image signal processing and transmission. Future applications for broadband networks are developed as well. Research in this area focuses on 3D displays, UHD panorama video production, human-machine interaction through gesture control, optical satellite communication and data transmission technologies such as visible light communications. Scientists at the institute work together with national and international research and industry partners. For example, institute researchers were and are involved in the development of the H.264 AVC video compression standard and its successor H.265 HEVC as part of the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) and the
Video Coding Experts Group The Video Coding Experts Group or Visual Coding Experts Group (VCEG, also known as Question 6) is a working group of the ITU Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T) concerned with standards for compression coding of video, images, audio, ...
(VCEG). Work on the various video compression standards received the
Technology and Engineering Emmy award The Technology and Engineering Emmy Awards, or Technology and Engineering Emmys, are one of two sets of Emmy Awards that are presented for outstanding achievement in engineering development in the television industry. The Technology and Engineer ...
multiple times.


Research

The research and development work of the Fraunhofer HHI takes place in six departments. The research focus of the ''Photonic Networks and Systems'' department are high-performance optical transmission systems for use in in-house, access, metropolitan, wide-area and satellite communication networks. The focus is on increasing the capacity as well as improving security and energy efficiency. The ''Photonic Components'' department develops
optoelectronic Optoelectronics (or optronics) is the study and application of electronic devices and systems that find, detect and control light, usually considered a sub-field of photonics. In this context, ''light'' often includes invisible forms of radiat ...
semiconductor A semiconductor is a material which has an electrical conductivity value falling between that of a conductor, such as copper, and an insulator, such as glass. Its resistivity falls as its temperature rises; metals behave in the opposite way. ...
components as well as integrated optical circuits for
data transmission Data transmission and data reception or, more broadly, data communication or digital communications is the transfer and reception of data in the form of a digital bitstream or a digitized analog signal transmitted over a point-to-point o ...
. Another focus is on infrared sensor systems, terahertz spectroscopy and high-performance semiconductor lasers for industrial and medical applications. The research on novel photonic sensors used in measuring and control systems for early hazard detection, energy management, robotics and medical technology is a focus of the ''Fiber Optical Sensor Systems'' department (branch). The sensors are characterized by extreme miniaturization, excellent communication and network capabilities and high energy efficiency. The research focus of the ''Wireless Communications and Networks'' department is on radio-based information transmission. The department provides contributions to the theory and technical feasibility of radio systems and develops hardware prototypes. This is supplemented by scientific studies, simulations and evaluations at the link and system levels. The ''Video Coding & Analytics'' department is researching actively the efficient encoding, transport, processing and analysis of video signals as well as
machine learning Machine learning (ML) is a field of inquiry devoted to understanding and building methods that 'learn', that is, methods that leverage data to improve performance on some set of tasks. It is seen as a part of artificial intelligence. Machine ...
. The focus in the ''Vision & Imaging Technologies'' department is on complex 2D/3D analysis and synthesis methods, on computer vision as well as innovative camera, sensor, display and projection systems. The department is researching for the entire video processing chain from content creation to playback.


Partnerships

Fraunhofer HHI employees hold professorships at the following universities: * Technical University of Berlin (image communication, optical and opto-electric integration, network information theory) *
Clausthal University of Technology The Clausthal University of Technology (german: Technische Universität Clausthal, also referred to as TU Clausthal or TUC) is an institute of technology ('' Technische Universität'') in Clausthal-Zellerfeld, Lower Saxony, Germany. The small publ ...
(applied photonics) *
Humboldt University of Berlin Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (german: Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, abbreviated HU Berlin) is a German public research university in the central borough of Mitte in Berlin. It was established by Frederick William III on the initiative ...
(visual computing) *
University of Potsdam The University of Potsdam is a public university in Potsdam, capital of the state of Brandenburg, Germany. It is mainly situated across three campuses in the city. Some faculty buildings are part of the New Palace of Sanssouci which is known ...
(embedded systems architectures for signal processing) Fraunhofer HHI is a member of the following internal Fraunhofer groups and alliances * Fraunhofer ICT Group * Fraunhofer Group for Microelectronics * Fraunhofer Group for Defense and Security * Fraunhofer Alliance Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) * Fraunhofer Alliance Big Data * Fraunhofer Innovation Cluster Secure Identity * Fraunhofer Innovation Cluster Life Cycle Engineering * Fraunhofer Alliance Digital Media * Fraunhofer Alliance Embedded Systems * Fraunhofer Alliance Vision


Infrastructure

The total budget of Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute in 2015 was around EUR 49.2 million. The external funding ratio was 75 percent. 49.8 percent of the budget came from industrial revenues, 13 percent from federal and state contract research, and 6.5 percent from funds provided by the European Union. Around 270 employees and 140 students worked at the institute in 2015.


History


Establishment of the institute

The founding phase of the Heinrich Hertz Institute began on 1 August 1927 with the written intention of the Study Society for Oscillation Research to establish an institute for the research on electrical and acoustic oscillation at the Technical University of Berlin. Members of this society were the German Reichspost, the Prussian Ministry of Science, Art and National Education, the
Reichs-Rundfunk-Gesellschaft The Reichs-Rundfunk-Gesellschaft (RRG; ''Reich Broadcasting Corporation'') was a national network of German regional public radio and television broadcasting companies active from 1925 until 1945. RRG's broadcasts were receivable in all parts o ...
, the Technische Hochschule zu Berlin, the large corporations of the electrical industry, and the German Electrical Engineering Association. Effectively, the institute was founded on 23 February 1928 as Heinrich Hertz Institute for Oscillation Research. The opening took place in 1930 in Berlin-Charlottenburg, Franklinstrasse 1, with four departments: High-Frequency Engineering, Telecommunications and Telegraph Technology, Acoustics and Mechanics. Research focused on radio and television technology, room acoustics and electronic music among other things. The institute was reorganized in 1936 and the name Heinrich Hertz was wiped out from its designation in the course of
National Socialist Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Na ...
"cleansing" in the interest of the
Third Reich Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...
.


Post World War II

After the institute building was entirely destroyed in 1945, the Heinrich Hertz Institute for Oscillation Research was newly founded in the same year by Gustav Leithäuser with the former department structure. During the time of the currency reform and
Berlin Blockade The Berlin Blockade (24 June 1948 – 12 May 1949) was one of the first major international crises of the Cold War. During the multinational occupation of post–World War II Germany, the Soviet Union blocked the Western Allies' railway, ro ...
in 1950, the institute was split into an eastern section ( Berlin-Adlershof) and a western section (
Berlin-Charlottenburg Charlottenburg () is a locality of Berlin within the borough of Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf. Established as a town in 1705 and named after Sophia Charlotte of Hanover, Queen consort of Prussia, it is best known for Charlottenburg Palace, the l ...
, Jebensstrasse 1). In 1968 the institute moved into the new building at Einsteinufer 37 in Berlin.


Institute with state and federal participation

The institute was renamed to Heinrich-Hertz-Institut for Nachrichtentechnik Berlin GmbH (Heinrich-Hertz Institute for Communication Technology) in 1975 with the state of
Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and List of cities in Germany by population, largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European Union by population within ci ...
and the
Federal Republic of Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated between ...
as shareholders. Realignment of the entire HHI research profile by Horst Ohnsorge. Systematic work on current problems of modern communication technology. Vision of a universal broadband communication network on a fiber optics basis. 5 specialist departments: General Principles; System Structures; Image and Sound; Relaying and Transmission; Planning. Support for optical communication engineering as a key technology at HHI in the 1980s. Restructuring of the institute with formation of two divisions: Communication Systems with the departments of Relaying and Transmission, Signal Processing and Terminal Equipment, Economic and Social Sciences Accompanying Research, and Human Engineering, and the division: Integrated Optics. In the 1990s research focused on the following fields: Photonic networks, electronic imaging technology for multimedia, mobile broadband systems, and integrated optics.


Transition to the Fraunhofer Society

The institute became part of the
Fraunhofer Society The Fraunhofer Society (german: Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der angewandten Forschung e.V., lit=Fraunhofer Society for the Advancement of Applied Research) is a German research organization with 76institutes spread throughout Germany ...
in 2003 and received today’s name, Fraunhofer Institute for Telecommunications, Heinrich Hertz Institute, HHI. The institute has been cooperating with the neighboring Technical University of Berlin for decades. A data transmission system was successfully developed in 2006 with a never-before-seen speed of 2560
Gb/s In telecommunications, data-transfer rate is the average number of bits (bitrate), characters or symbols (baudrate), or data blocks per unit time passing through a communication link in a data-transmission system. Common data rate units are multi ...
, which means transmitting a data volume corresponding to the content of 60
DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kind ...
s takes one second. What’s more, a breakthrough was achieved in video compression making it possible to store motion pictures in the high-resolution
HDTV High-definition television (HD or HDTV) describes a television system which provides a substantially higher image resolution than the previous generation of technologies. The term has been used since 1936; in more recent times, it refers to the g ...
format with 2 million pixels per image on DVD. On 10 November 2016 scientists of the Fraunhofer HHI established a bidirectional 1.7
Tbit The bit is the most basic unit of information in computing and digital communications. The name is a portmanteau of binary digit. The bit represents a logical state with one of two possible values. These values are most commonly represented ...
/s
free-space optical communication Free-space optical communication (FSO) is an optical communication technology that uses light propagating in free space to wirelessly transmit data for telecommunications or computer networking. "Free space" means air, outer space, vacuum, or ...
s link over the air. The eye-safe optical beam transmission was transmitted over a distance of 380 meters. Eye-safe operation through 380-m air was successfully demonstrated at a total antenna output power of less than 10 mW. The signals in both directions consisted of 40 wavelength channels of 43 Gbit/s.2x1.7-Terabit/s eye-safe optical link demonstrated over 380 meters at Fraunhofer HHI
– hhi.fraunhofer.de, 2 February 2017.


List of directors

* Karl Willy Wagner, founding director (1927–1936) * Willi Willing (provisional February 1936–March 1937) * Heinrich Fassbender (1937–1945) * Gustav Leithäuser (1945–1953) * Friedrich-Wilhelm Gundlach (1957–1972) * Horst Ohnsorge (1975–1980) * Wolfgang Grunow (1980–1982) * Clemens Baack (1982–2002) * Joachim Hesse (provisional with Mr. Mrowka 2002–2004) * Hans-Joachim Grallert (2004–2013) and Holger Boche (2004–2010) * Martin Schell (since 2014) and
Thomas Wiegand Thomas Wiegand (born 6 May 1970 in Wismar) is a German electrical engineer who substantially contributed to the creation of the H.264/AVC, H.265/HEVC, and H.266/VVC video coding standards. For H.264/AVC, Wiegand was one of the chairmen of th ...
(since 2014)


References


External links


Fraunhofer Institute for Telecommunications
{{authority control Telecommunications engineering Fraunhofer Society Organisations based in Berlin Research institutes in Germany