CNS Core: Small: Collaborative Research: Multi-dimensional All-Optical Networking

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Today's Internet backbone is composed almost entirely of optical fibers. The deployment of new types of optical fibers, such as multicore or multimode optical fibers, can dramatically increase network capacity through transmission of multiple data streams over disjoint parallel spatial paths, a technique called space division multiplexing. This research project seeks to optimize the design of all-optical networks based on multicore fibers. The project's outcomes will help the academic and industrial research community in its quest for a faster, more efficient Internet, capable of supporting future information services and providing connectivity among billions of devices. The primary goal of this project is to design all-optical networks based on multicore fibers with petabit-per-second links and reconfigurable add-drop multiplexers. The project will characterize physical layer performance that represents fundamental limits on network scale. Specifically, it has the following objectives: (i) Development of a physical-layer-aware network simulation tool for the efficient computation of the end-to-end performance of various optical network topologies, taking into account the impact of transmission impairments unique to space division multiplexing; ii) Construction of an experimental testbed to study the cascadability of optical components and optical nodes in optical networks based on multicore fibers; (iii) Design of multidimensional modulation formats (super-constellations) using joint modulation of the signal quadrature components and of groups of spatial channels.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.