Microstructured Optical Fiber Technologies for Advanced Optical Network Applications

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Transmission speed has always been an important factor in telecom networks carrying voice, data and videoapplications. However, with the emergence of new applications such as cloud computing, video and wirelessLong Term Evolution (LTE) services and storage area network (SAN) applications in the last years, as well asthe requirements for future 5G networks, transmission speed and low latency are now crucial in many activitiesof companies involved in the Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) sector.The current problem faced by ICT companies is mainly related to the speed of information propagation inconventional fiber-optic networks. Latency in fiber-optic networks is generated by the optical fiber itself, theoptical amplifiers and dispersion compensating fibers, as well as the optoelectronic devices. Because of theactual design of the current optical fibers, the speed of propagation of light waves is much less than thepropagation speed of free space waves, mainly because of the material that constitutes its core. Currentapproaches to address this problem are multifold and include transponders without forward-error-correction(FEC), Raman amplifiers, dispersion compensating modules based on Fiber Bragg Gratings (FBG), as well asadvanced switch architectures and packet-optical technologies or even microwave links. However, thesesolutions have limitations and do not fully address the problem. Progress has been made in the last few years inthe development of new fiber waveguides with much lower core refractive indices ?refs?. The applicability ofthese new fiber structures in real network deployment conditions has not yet been demonstrated.The proposed project will explore low latency fiber technologies. Microstructured optical fibers based oninnovative waveguide designs do offer some unique optical properties that are impossible to attain with currentconventional singlemode optical fibers. The project will consist in evaluating different microstructured fibertechnologies, with the objective to determine the most promising approaches for realizing low latency opticallinks.