Roadmap on all-optical processing

The ability to process optical signals without passing into the electrical domain has always attracted the attention of the research community. Processing photons by photons unfolds new scenarios, in principle allowing for unseen signal processing and computing capabilities. Optical computation can be seen as a large scientific field in which researchers operate, trying to find solutions to their specific needs by different approaches; although the challenges can be substantially different, they are typically addressed using knowledge and technological platforms that are shared across the whole field. This significant know-how can also benefit other scientific communities, providing lateral solutions to their problems, as well as leading to novel applications. The aim of this Roadmap is to provide a broad view of the state-of-the-art in this lively scientific research field and to discuss the advances required to tackle emerging challenges, thanks to contributions authored by experts affiliated to both academic institutions and high-tech industries. The Roadmap is organized so as to put side by side contributions on different aspects of optical processing, aiming to enhance the cross-contamination of ideas between scientists working in three different fields of photonics: optical gates and logical units, high bit-rate signal processing and optical quantum computing. The ultimate intent of this paper is to provide guidance for young scientists as well as providing research-funding institutions and stake holders with a comprehensive overview of perspectives and opportunities offered by this research field

Mapping multiplexing technique (MMT): a novel intensity modulated transmission format for high-speed optical communication systems

There is a huge rapid growth in the deployment of data centers, mainly driven from the increasing demand of internet services as video streaming, e-commerce, Internet Of Things (IOT), social media, and cloud computing. This led data centers to experience an expeditious increase in the amount of network traffic that they have to sustain due to requirement of scaling with the processing speed of Complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS) technology. On the other side, as more and more data centers and processing cores are on demand, as the power consumption is becoming a challenging issue. Unless novel power efficient methodologies are innovated, the information technology industry will be more liable to a future power crunch. As such, low complex novel transmission formats featuring both power efficiency and low cost are considered the major characteristics enabling large-scale, high performance data transmission environment for short-haul optical interconnects and metropolitan range data networks. In this thesis, a novel high-speed Intensity-Modulated Direct-Detection (IM/DD) transmission format named “Mapping Multiplexing Technique (MMT)” for high-speed optical fiber networks, is proposed and presented. Conceptually, MMT design challenges the high power consumption issue that exists in high-speed short and medium range networks. The proposed novel scheme provides low complex means for increasing the power efficiency of optical transceivers at an impactful tradeoff between power efficiency, spectral efficiency, and cost. The novel scheme has been registered as a patent (Malaysia PI2012700631) that can be employed for applications related but not limited to, short-haul optical interconnects in data centers and Metropolitan Area networks (MAN). A comprehensive mathematical model for N-channel MMT modulation format has been developed. In addition, a signal space model for the N-channel MMT has been presented to serve as a platform for comparison with other transmission formats under optical channel constraints. Especially, comparison with M-PAM, as meanwhile are of practical interest to expand the capacity for optical interconnects deployment which has been recently standardized for Ethernet IEEE 802.3bs 100Gb/s and in today ongoing investigation activities by IEEE 802.3 400Gb/s Ethernet Task Force. Performance metrics have been considered by the derivation of the average electrical and optical power for N-channel MMT symbols in comparison with Pulse Amplitude Modulation (M-PAM) format with respect to the information capacity. Asymptotic power efficiency evaluation in multi-dimensional signal space has been considered. For information capacity of 2, 3 and 4 bits/symbol, 2-channel, 3-channel and 4-channel MMT modulation formats can reduce the power penalty by 1.76 dB, 2.2 dB and 4 dB compared with 4-PAM, 8-PAM and 16-PAM, respectively. This enhancement is equivalent to 53%, 60% and 71% energy per bit reduction to the transmission of 2, 3 and 4 bits per symbol employing 2-, 3- and 4-channel MMT compared with 4-, 8- and 16-PAM format, respectively. One of the major dependable parameters that affect the immunity of a modulation format to fiber non-linearities, is the system baud rate. The propagation of pulses in fiber with bitrates in the order > 10G, is not only limited by the linear fiber impairments, however, it has strong proportionality with fiber intra-channel non-linearities (Self Phase Modulation (SPM), Intra-channel Cross-Phase Modulation (IXPM) and Intra-channel Four-Wave Mixing (IFWM)). Hence, in addition to the potential application of MMT in short-haul networks, the thesis validates the practicality of implementing N-channel MMT system accompanied by dispersion compensation methodologies to extend the reach of error free transmission (BER ≤ 10-12) for Metro-networks. N-Channel MMT has been validated by real environment simulation results to outperform the performance of M-PAM in tolerating fiber non-linearities. By the employment of pre-post compensation to tolerate both residual chromatic dispersion and non-linearity, performance above the error free transmission limit at 40Gb/s bit rate have been attained for 2-, 3- and 4-channel MMT over spans lengths of up to 1200Km, 320 Km and 320 Km, respectively. While, at an aggregated bit rate of 100 Gb/s, error free transmission can be achieved for 2-, 3- and 4-channel MMT over spans lengths of up to 480 Km, 80 Km and 160 Km, respectively. At the same spectral efficiency, 4-channel MMT has realized a single channel maximum error free transmission over span lengths up to 320 Km and 160 Km at 40Gb/s and 100Gb/s, respectively, in contrast with 4-PAM attaining 240 Km and 80 Km at 40Gb/s and 100Gb/s, respectively

Mapping multiplexing technique (MMT): a novel intensity modulated transmission format for high-speed optical communication systems

There is a huge rapid growth in the deployment of data centers, mainly driven from the increasing demand of internet services as video streaming, e-commerce, Internet Of Things (IOT), social media, and cloud computing. This led data centers to experience an expeditious increase in the amount of network traffic that they have to sustain due to requirement of scaling with the processing speed of Complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS) technology. On the other side, as more and more data centers and processing cores are on demand, as the power consumption is becoming a challenging issue. Unless novel power efficient methodologies are innovated, the information technology industry will be more liable to a future power crunch. As such, low complex novel transmission formats featuring both power efficiency and low cost are considered the major characteristics enabling large-scale, high performance data transmission environment for short-haul optical interconnects and metropolitan range data networks. In this thesis, a novel high-speed Intensity-Modulated Direct-Detection (IM/DD) transmission format named “Mapping Multiplexing Technique (MMT)” for high-speed optical fiber networks, is proposed and presented. Conceptually, MMT design challenges the high power consumption issue that exists in high-speed short and medium range networks. The proposed novel scheme provides low complex means for increasing the power efficiency of optical transceivers at an impactful tradeoff between power efficiency, spectral efficiency, and cost. The novel scheme has been registered as a patent (Malaysia PI2012700631) that can be employed for applications related but not limited to, short-haul optical interconnects in data centers and Metropolitan Area networks (MAN). A comprehensive mathematical model for N-channel MMT modulation format has been developed. In addition, a signal space model for the N-channel MMT has been presented to serve as a platform for comparison with other transmission formats under optical channel constraints. Especially, comparison with M-PAM, as meanwhile are of practical interest to expand the capacity for optical interconnects deployment which has been recently standardized for Ethernet IEEE 802.3bs 100Gb/s and in today ongoing investigation activities by IEEE 802.3 400Gb/s Ethernet Task Force. Performance metrics have been considered by the derivation of the average electrical and optical power for N-channel MMT symbols in comparison with Pulse Amplitude Modulation (M-PAM) format with respect to the information capacity. Asymptotic power efficiency evaluation in multi-dimensional signal space has been considered. For information capacity of 2, 3 and 4 bits/symbol, 2-channel, 3-channel and 4-channel MMT modulation formats can reduce the power penalty by 1.76 dB, 2.2 dB and 4 dB compared with 4-PAM, 8-PAM and 16-PAM, respectively. This enhancement is equivalent to 53%, 60% and 71% energy per bit reduction to the transmission of 2, 3 and 4 bits per symbol employing 2-, 3- and 4-channel MMT compared with 4-, 8- and 16-PAM format, respectively. One of the major dependable parameters that affect the immunity of a modulation format to fiber non-linearities, is the system baud rate. The propagation of pulses in fiber with bitrates in the order > 10G, is not only limited by the linear fiber impairments, however, it has strong proportionality with fiber intra-channel non-linearities (Self Phase Modulation (SPM), Intra-channel Cross-Phase Modulation (IXPM) and Intra-channel Four-Wave Mixing (IFWM)). Hence, in addition to the potential application of MMT in short-haul networks, the thesis validates the practicality of implementing N-channel MMT system accompanied by dispersion compensation methodologies to extend the reach of error free transmission (BER ≤ 10-12) for Metro-networks. N-Channel MMT has been validated by real environment simulation results to outperform the performance of M-PAM in tolerating fiber non-linearities. By the employment of pre-post compensation to tolerate both residual chromatic dispersion and non-linearity, performance above the error free transmission limit at 40Gb/s bit rate have been attained for 2-, 3- and 4-channel MMT over spans lengths of up to 1200Km, 320 Km and 320 Km, respectively. While, at an aggregated bit rate of 100 Gb/s, error free transmission can be achieved for 2-, 3- and 4-channel MMT over spans lengths of up to 480 Km, 80 Km and 160 Km, respectively. At the same spectral efficiency, 4-channel MMT has realized a single channel maximum error free transmission over span lengths up to 320 Km and 160 Km at 40Gb/s and 100Gb/s, respectively, in contrast with 4-PAM attaining 240 Km and 80 Km at 40Gb/s and 100Gb/s, respectively

Lumped silicon photonic Mach-Zehnder modulators for high-speed optical interconnects

The boom in worldwide internet connectivity and cloud services has caused unprecedented need for high-bandwidth connections between and within data centres. Silicon photonics is becoming the platform of choice to provide low-cost, large-volume production of future optical transceivers. However, the scale of modern data centres introduces challenges of speed, reach and, crucially, energy consumption for these devices. Silicon photonic Mach-Zehnder modulators (MZMs) are one possibility for providing electrical-to-optical conversion at the transmit side of such fibre-optic links. In this thesis, comprehensive investigation is carried out into lumped MZMs, specifically, as their unterminated, capacitive load holds promise for lower power consumption than more typical travelling-wave MZMs with resistive terminations. Detailed characterisations and simulations of dual-drive silicon photonic lumped MZMs are made to investigate the key trade-off of modulation bandwidth and drive voltage. Drivers with low source impedance are investigated as a means of boosting lumped MZM bandwidths, while advanced modulation formats such as four-level pulse-amplitude modulation (PAM4) and electrical duobinary modulation (EDB) are also leveraged to provide more spectrally-efficient signals. In particular, experimental demonstration is made of a novel low-impedance, switched-capacitor PAM4 driver for a lumped MZM in a 30 Gb/s silicon photonic link over 10 km of optical fibre. Simulations are carried out to optimise the bias and doping levels of lumped MZMs used with such drivers. Predistortion methods are investigated through experiments and simulations as alternative ways to increase the bandwidth. A simple first-order FIR filter is shown experimentally to enable 25 Gb/s NRZ modulation with a low-bandwidth MZM, while more optimised precompensation enables 50 Gb/s PAM4 and EDB. Finally, simulations using an accurate equivalent circuit model for the lumped MZM demonstrate the potential for a well-designed driver with lowered source impedance and controlled amounts of inductive peaking to reduce the need for transmitter-side precompensation