Integrated photonics for a petabit optical switch

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

As we shift to the cloud computing paradigm, the amount of data being communicated over the Internet will triple in the next five years. By the end of decade, it is expected that Ethernet connections, the protocol for short distance networks found inside buildings and datacenters, will be carrying data at rates of a terabit per second, more than ten times higher than today's most advanced standard. However, for the terabit era to come to fruition, breakthroughs in communication equipment to accommodate these unprecedented data rates are needed. In this project, we will investigate the photonic devices, photonic integrated circuits, electronic integration strategies, and prototypes to be scaled to a petabit optical switch. A switch is an important class of network equipment, which directs data flow within the network. A switch having 1000 input and 1000 output ports each carrying 1 terabit per second translates to a throughput of a petabit per second, which is about 60 times higher than today's state-of-the-art products. At present, switching is done electronically, so optical signals are converted to electrical signals and then back into optical signals again. The problem with this approach is the unsustainable power and thermal density as the data rate increases. An optical switch that does not require optical-to-electronic-to-optical conversion can be hundreds-fold more efficient. We will overcome the longstanding challenges in optical switching of scalability, low power consumption, and losses by using photonic integrated circuits implemented in a custom silicon nitride on silicon-on-insulator platform. Our platform offers performance that cannot be matched by other conventional integrated photonic platforms and is the most promising for making photonic integrated circuits that are scalable to a 1000 x 1000 port petabit optical switch.