Amplified Silicon Nitride Waveguides for the Data Center

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Silicon photonics has been identified as a vital enabling technology for the data center as the performance and energy demands on data center architectures are continuously growing to support video streaming, social media and cloud services AEPONYX is building fast, tunable, low-power consumption optical switches based on a combination of micro-electro-mechanical-systems and silicon and silicon nitride photonic on-chip platforms. One of the issues faced as they scale up their switching technology for higher performance and capacity (increasing the overall transmission length and number of photonic elements), is that the signal loss also increases proportionally. To achieve sufficient signal power at the receiver end of the communications link, a low-noise, efficient means of amplifying the optical signal will be urgently required. In this project my research team and I will build on our expertise in compact, integrated rare-earth-doped waveguide amplifiers to provide an optical amplification solution for data centers together with industry partner AEPONYX. This project will allow AEPONYX to leap forward on their systems-development roadmap and significantly increase their competitive advantage, while leading to new knowledge about the design and performance of optical amplifiers integrated on a silicon nitride photonics platform and the application of such amplifiers in the data center.