Scaling capacity of fiber-optic transmission systems via silicon photonics

Nanophotonics

article

Wei Shi¹  Ye Tian²  Antoine Gervais² 

[1] Université Laval;Centre d’optique, photonique et laser (COPL) and the Département de génie électrique et génie informatique, Université Laval

关键词: fiber-optic transport networks;    high-capacity optical transmissions;    nanophotonic devices;    optical communications;    optical multiplexing;    optical transceivers;    photonic integrated circuits;    silicon photonics;   

DOI  :  10.1515/nanoph-2020-0309

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: De Gruyter

【 摘 要 】

The tremendous growth of data traffic has spurred a rapid evolution of optical communications for a higher data transmission capacity. Next-generation fiber-optic communication systems will require dramatically increased complexity that cannot be obtained using discrete components. In this context, silicon photonics is quickly maturing. Capable of manipulating electrons and photons on the same platform, this disruptive technology promises to cram more complexity on a single chip, leading to orders-of-magnitude reduction of integrated photonic systems in size, energy, and cost. This paper provides a system perspective and reviews recent progress in silicon photonics probing all dimensions of light to scale the capacity of fiber-optic networks toward terabits-per-second per optical interface and petabits-per-second per transmission link. Firstly, we overview fundamentals and the evolving trends of silicon photonic fabrication process. Then, we focus on recent progress in silicon coherent optical transceivers. Further scaling the system capacity requires multiplexing techniques in all the dimensions of light: wavelength, polarization, and space, for which we have seen impressive demonstrations of on-chip functionalities such as polarization diversity circuits and wavelength- and space-division multiplexers. Despite these advances, large-scale silicon photonic integrated circuits incorporating a variety of active and passive functionalities still face considerable challenges, many of which will eventually be addressed as the technology continues evolving with the entire ecosystem at a fast pace.

【 授权许可】

CC BY