Wired for the Future
Housing for the New Millennium

A newly built research house on the National Research Council's (NRC) Montreal Rd. campus will incorporate state-of-the-art fibre optic wiring that will give access to a wide range of information services and enable advanced building management and interaction features. Within the premises, any room could host any combination of Internet computers, telephones, fax machines, televisions, stereo systems, and environmental sensors and controllers for heating, lighting, humidity and air quality.

"Tomorrow's home and small business will have access not only to basic and advanced communications and entertainment services, but also to world-wide multimedia databases for research, and to health care, commerce, security, fire protection and utilities meter reading facilities," said Tim Mayo, Project Manager of the Canadian Centre for Housing Technology (CCHT).

As a result of a recent agreement, the Optical Processing and Computing Consortium of Canada (OPCOM) and CCHT are co-operating to develop cyber- friendly homes and small business premises. At the heart of the co-operation are three houses nearing completion at the $1.5 million housing technology research centre. The research house has been equipped with an optical fibre infrastructure associated with every electrical outlet. A single composite plug can simultaneously deliver power and information services. The house will be connected to the outside world by further optical fibre facilities.

"This unique combination of optical fibre to and within the residence makes possible a range of research activities to shape information technology standards for the next generation of housing", added Dr. Jacek Chrostowski, Technical Director of OPCOM. "Fibre offers by far the highest quality of transmission performance in terms of data capacity and integrity and is fully compatible with the emerging bandwidth-intensive services such as digital HDTV." Solutions developed here will supersede the various band-aid technologies available today. Research and technology demonstrations will take place over the next five years.

CCHT is a partnership between NRC, Natural Resources Canada (NRCan), Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) and the housing industry to conduct research, evaluate and demonstrate new technologies, accelerate the market acceptance of innovations and showcase the Canadian housing technologies to the country and the world.

OPCOM, a consortium of NRC, OCRI, Industry Canada and the photonics industry, is managed by the Ottawa Centre for Research and Innovation (OCRI). It was formed to research, develop and advance optical technologies for the storage, access and processing of information. It encourages and supports collaborative research, the results of which are made available for exploitation by its members.

Since its inception in 1994, the OPCOM consortium has pioneered very high- speed small-area network (SAN) technologies combining a passive optical fibre network with time and wavelength division multiplexing and broadband switching. Member companies include Andrew Engineering Inc., FiberView Technologies Inc., Genetix Software, KOM Inc., Optoelectronics Inc., hfOptex  Inc. and Oprel Technology Inc. NRC's Institute for National Measurement Standards has been participating actively in the research activities, and funding support has been provided by Industry Canada.

For more information, please contact:
S. A. (Alex) Mayman, P.Eng.
President, OPCOM
36 Steacie Drive
Kanata, Ontario  K2K 2A9
Tel.: (613) 599 6449 X258
Fax: (613) 592 8163
e-mail: amayman@ocri.ca

or

David A. Kahn
Business Development Manager
NRC
Institute for National Measurement Standards
Montreal Road, Building M-36
Ottawa, Canada  K1O 0R6
Tel.: (613) 9985567
Fax: (613) 594 1473
e-mail: david.kahn@nrc.ca