Rethinking the fundamentals of photonic signal processing for "green" communications and computing

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The implementation of photonic circuits for temporal signal generation, processing, and detection in information and communications technology (ICT) systems is generally envisioned as an extremely promising approach to overcome the speed limitations of present electronics-based solutions. The bandwidth advantage of photonics is especially attractive to cope with the ever-increasing demand for “higher capacity at a lower cost” in high-speed telecommunications, information processing and computing platforms. However, photonic solutions still suffer from two main limitations, namely 1) they are typically bulky and 2) they are “power hungry”, preventing the practical use and spread of photonic signal-processing technologies beyond a few niche applications. Significant progress has been made concerning size reduction of photonic structures, through successful device implementations in compact fiber-optics technologies, e.g. fiber Bragg gratings, or in integrated-waveguide configurations, most prominently CMOS-compatible photonic chips. Such footprint improvements in turn have had a positive impact on the energy performance of photonic signal-processing technologies. In spite of this progress, present photonic signal-processing designs intrinsically use much higher amounts of energy than competing technologies (e.g. electronics), and very little effort has been devoted so far to improving their performance in terms of energy efficiency. The research program described in this proposal will focus on the design and realization of photonic signal-processing devices for efficient generation, manipulation, and detection of ultrafast data and control signals, of fundamental importance for broadband telecommunications, and high-speed information processing and computing. The distinctive focus of the program will be on defining innovative, general strategies for optimizing the energy efficiency of the target photonic circuits without trading their processing speed advantage. Particularly, we will pursue the realization of the target circuits in fiber-optics and/or integrated waveguide (silicon photonics) technologies, with an emphasis on fiber/integrated grating structures. The novel design strategies to be investigated will be capable of providing dramatic (orders-of-magnitude) improvements on energy performance over present technologies at processing speeds well beyond the reach of electronics, above the THz range. Sub-systems to be pursued in the mid to long-term will include ‘on chip’ reconfigurable circuits for optical linear filtering, arbitrary optical waveform generation and detection, and ultrafast analog and digital computing. In the short-term, activities at the core of the program will be conducted around four inter-related research projects, involving the development of (a) energy-optimized analog optical signal processors, (b) “green” noiseless waveform amplification methods, (c) “zero-energy” ultrafast optical logical gates, and (d) energy-optimized circuits for ultrafast clock recovery, generation and processing. The outcome of this research could open the path to the use of photonic signal-processing solutions at a much larger scale, directly contributing to overcome present electronic bottlenecks in almost any application or sector relying in ICT infrastructure. The new knowledge generated from this program and the training of highly qualified personnel (HQP) in the targeted strategic areas will contribute to enhance Canada's global competitiveness across a very wide range of high-technology sectors.