News: Optoelectronics
22 September 2022
Vector Photonics’ principle development engineer presents paper at ECOC
In the 8th International Symposium for Optical Interconnect in Data Centres at the European Conference on Optical Communications (ECOC 2022) in Basel, Switzerland (19–21 September), Dr Calum Hill, principle development engineer at Vector Photonics Ltd of Glasgow, Scotland, UK, gave an invited talk on 21 September on ‘PCSELs at multiple wavelengths for high-bandwidth communications’.
Vector Photonics says that the invitation to present is a testament to the importance that its all-semiconductor PCSELs (photonic crystal surface-emitting lasers) can play in resolving many of the challenges faced by the datacoms industry as bandwidth requirements increase – namely power consumption, latency, physical connection size and costs. Senior executives from companies such as NVIDIA, ADVA, Infinera, Huawei, BT and IBM presented alongside Vector Photonics, as well as numerous universities from around the world.
“Hyperscale data centers require at least 800Gbs data transmission interconnects to keep up with growing demand for cloud services,” says Hill. “This is at the limit of current pluggable optics technology. Vector Photonics’ PCSELs more easily enable co-packaged optics solutions, where the optical functionality is integrated onto the ASIC (application-specific integrated circuit) to improve overall system performance, whilst reducing system energy consumption and cost,” he adds.
“The CW (continuous wave) PCSELs, required for these bandwidths, operate in the O-band as a high-power seed laser for multiple data channels,” continues Hill. “Their surface emission gives far better power scaling and beam divergence than conventional solutions, as well as simpler silicon photonics fabrication. Furthermore, the structure of a PCSEL is not dependent on the base epitaxy used, allowing PCSELs to be made at multiple different wavelengths for different communication needs.”
