Reflections on Opening New Telecommunication Windows

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Current trends suggest that bandwidth demands will continue to increase. Optical networks research is responding to satisfy this need on several fronts: a move to spatial division multiplexing or increasing the spectral efficiency of currently deployed single mode fibres with more efficient modulation formats, perhaps also with the potential for nonlinear mitigation.

Whatever method, or plurality of methods, significant digital signal processing at the transmitter and/or receiver will be required.  The latter is already appearing in the marketplace as commodity hardware building blocks, in particular with 200G/400G solutions for metropolitan interconnect between hyper-scale datacentres.

But what might the future hold? Although C+L bands have been researched for several decades, it is only recently that there has been a shift to offer such systems to the market. An alternative approach is perhaps to extend the available fibre bandwidth beyond C+L into a fourth telecommunications window. Is this new? Well, not really. Back in the 80s, before EDFAs transformed transmission networks, research efforts were not only focused on coherent detection, but also investigated low-loss fibre materials and geometries at wavelengths beyond the Rayleigh scattering edge and just before the infrared resonance in glass at mid-infrared.

We know how to exploit rare-earth doped glass for amplification, so now is the time to reconsider transmission around 2µm wavelength. There is a suite of emerging new fibres [designs, geometries] which can support greater bandwidths, and also new optical components that act as key enabling technologies to operate at this waveband.

As we begin to explore further into the IR, we can appreciate that silicon’s increased transparency would enable very efficient silicon-based optical devices, which would complement silicon-based electronic processing devices that benefited from a half-century of Innovation exploiting Moore's Law.

So in this webinar I will reflect on the potential of opening new wavelength windows for telecommunications, exposing the key enabling technologies that are emerging, bringing to a new journey in the decades to come.

Instructor

Fatima Gunning

Dr. Fatima Gunning is a Senior Staff Researcher at Tyndall National Institute, University College Cork, Ireland, since 2003. Dr. Gunning is originally from Brazil, where she holds a BSc in Physics (1995), MSc in Optoelectronics (1997) and PhD in Nonlinear Optics (2000) from Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio), working with inducing nonlinear effects in glass and fibre via thermal poling. During her studies she worked as an intern at British Telecom for a number of years, which led to her appointment at Corning Research Centre at Martlesham Heath, where she worked with fast semiconductor electroabsorption modulators and wavelength selective switches. In Tyndall, she was part of the team that demonstrated Coherent WDM as a tool to increase capacity and spectral efficiency for the first time, and she also led the team that showed the first WDM transmission at 2μm as part of the FP7 EU project MODEGAP. Dr. Gunning is sponsored by Science Foundation Ireland, Irish Research Council and the European Union through the Horizon2020 project, TIPS. She’s also a Principal Investigator for the Irish Photonic Integration Centre (IPIC), where she’s leading the team to integrate high capacity flexible optical networks with a software-defined control plane. Her interests range from novel semiconductor devices, through high capacity subsystems, novel optical fibres technologies, to software defined networks and applications of novel wavelengths in telecoms and sensing. She has currently the role of interim Head of Graduate Studies at Tyndall, she’s the Chair for the Empowering Women @ Tyndall committee to support, increase visibility and promote women at Tyndall, in addition to work with many STEM outreach activities.

Publication Year: 2018

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Reflections on Opening New Telecommunication Windows
  • Course Provider: Photonics Society
  • Course Number: PS005
  • Duration (Hours): 1
  • Credits: None