In the last few years, the world has seen an accelerated pace of digital transformation. Residential broadband usage has increased due to video streaming and video conferencing in home office settings. The need for data communication will be further accelerated by emerging applications. How can the fiber-optic communication systems be made more efficient to fulfill future digital communication needs is a question.
wavelength division multiplexing is a technique used in fiber-optic communication systems to deal with increased data rates. The channels are combined in a way that results in a transmission. The spectrum on the receiver side is de-multiplexed. This operation is usually done usingPICs. Microscale components that manipulate information in multiple wavelength channels are possible thanks to the use of PICs.
In a paper published in the Journal of Optical Microsystems, Hamed Sattari and co-authors have demonstrated a power-efficient component for the demultiplexing operation by physically moving a suspended Silicon ring. A micro-mechanically operated add-drop filter can be created using the mechanical displacement of the ring resonator. Micro-electro-mechanical systems are used in consumer electronics such as micromirrors for video projector.
The paper shows that the novel Silicon photonic MEMS is about 3 orders of magnitude smaller. The cross-section of the ring resonator is less than 650 NM and the displacement is less than 500 NM. The small footprint and low power consumption of the new filter make it highly energy efficient.
IMEC, an international research and development organization with headquarters in Belgium, has implemented the add-drop filter on a standard Silicon Photonics platform. It is the first time that a technology has been integrated in a standard process. "We demonstrate that it is possible to integrate with established high- performance components on-chip and can be scaled to large volumes," said Niels Quack, who led the development of the technology.
Sattari said that the contribution shows that the technology has taken a step forward. A missing platform that can make data-center and fiber-optic communication applications more energy efficient is provided by the large-scale photonic integrated circuits.
More information is available in the Journal of Optical Microsystems. There is a book titled "10117/1.JOM.2.4.044
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