Dr. Suwat Thaniyavarn

(Founder, President, and CEO)

Prior to forming EOSPACE Inc., Dr. Thaniyavarn headed the Integrated Optics/Microwave Photonics Group at the Boeing High Tech Center.  In late 1997, Dr. Thaniyavarn formed EOSPACE Inc., spinning integrated optics technology out of Boeing.  All of the key members in his group joined the company in 1998. 

Dr. Thaniyavarn has been working for nearly 20 years on LiNbO3 optical integrated circuit (IC) technology for aerospace applications, starting in 1982 at the TRW Electro-Optics Research Ctr., and later at the Boeing High Tech Ctr.  He began with early work on domain inversion in LiNbO3, followed by the development of several proprietary techniques and inventions relating to integrated optical devices, including:

  • A general integrated optical polarization converter (a crucial emerging component for Polarization-Mode-Dispersion, PMD, compensation systems) 
  • A self-biased, 1x2 directional coupler modulator (a complementary-output modulator with operating point automatically set at zero bias) 
  • A compact NxN "strictly non-blocking" optical switch arrays (high-speed switch matrices for the next-generation of fast optical packet switching) 
  • A switch with a "digital" step response (a low crosstalk switch design that greatly relaxes the stringent requirement on control voltage precision) 
  • A compact programmable optical time-delay module (for broadband phased array beam steering and for time-delay switching for fiber optic systems) 
  • A universal optical phase control IC module (a common control module for optically-controlled microwave phased-array antennas of any RF frequency)

Dr. Thaniyavarn was also the program manager / principal investigator for well over ten aerospace programs including  DARPA "Analog OE Module," "Photonic Networks for RF Integrated Sensor Systems," "Integrated Wavelength Cross-Connect Module," and several Air Force, Army and Navy programs. 

Dr. Thaniyavarn received both his B.S. and M.S. in 1978 from Cal Tech. He earned his Ph.D. (EE) from the U.C. Berkeley working on high-speed optical semiconductor devices.

 

Dr. Gregory L. Abbas

(Vice President and Chief Engineer)

Before joining EOSPACE in September 1998, Dr. Abbas was an Associate Technical Fellow of the Boeing Company.  He was a vital member of the Integrated Optics/Microwave Photonics Group.  During his ten years at Boeing, he held a wide variety of positions including:

  • Lead system designer of the multi-Gb/s optical inter-satellite links for the Teledesic program.  He also was involved in system design and analysis of the RF uplink and downlink phased array antennas on the satellite and for the low-cost user terminals
  • Lead designer of a low-power burst-mode fiber optic transmitter for a satellite-based communication system for the Fiber Optic Data Bus (FODB) contract.
  • Lead communication system engineer for Boeing’s portion of the 1997 Joint Warfare Interoperability Demonstration (JWID ’97).  This project demonstrated airborne reception of data from a fixed service satellite (FSS) at T1 rates (1.544 Mbps) through Boeing’s electronically steered phased array antenna.
  • Principal investigator for the Air Force Rome Lab “Optically-Controlled SHF SATCOM Array” contract, where he studied multiple architectures for optically-controlled phased array antennas.
  • Demonstration at the Air Force Wright Lab of a 16x16 optical switch for the DARPA Analog Optoelectronics Module Program
  • Demonstration of electronic adaptive jammer nulling techniques suitable for use on structurally integrated apertures
  • Investigation of optical methods for microwave signal generation including sideband injection locking and optical phase locking
  • Development of several high precision laser radar position sensors for aerospace applications. 

Before joining Boeing, Dr. Abbas was a co-op student and a research assistant at MIT Lincoln Laboratory in the Optical Communication Technology Group for seven years.  His work there involved research on optical inter-satellite communication systems.  His master's thesis involved analyzing and demonstrating the first dual-detector balanced optical heterodyne receiver.  He also worked on injection locking of laser diode arrays and broad area lasers.

Dr. Abbas received both his S.B. (Electrical Eng. & Computer Science) and S.M. (Electrical Engineering) degrees from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1984.  He received an E.E. (Electrical Engineering) degree in 1985 and a Ph.D. (Electrical Engineering) in 1988, also from the MIT.  Dr. Abbas’ Ph.D. thesis work involved developing algorithms for allocating frequency assignments to multiple classes of traffic in a frequency division multiplexed local area network.