Advanced micro-opto-electro-mechanical systems for elastic optical telecommunications networks

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The emergence of new digital services fueled by the progress in artificial intelligence and the development of the internet of things requires access and datacom networks to continuously increase their capacity. Optical technologies have demonstrated that they can enable links with several terabits of bandwidth in long-haul networks. However, these technologies are too expensive to be deployed in short reach networks. Furthermore, to amortize the investment needed to setup high capacity optical networks, service providers are looking for solutions that can support different types of traffic from consumer, business, and wireless access (i.e. 5G) applications. Therefore the next generation of optical technologies must enable flexible networks. In order to provide affordable and efficient solutions to networking equipment manufacturer, four years ago researchers from the University of Quebec at Montreal and École de Technologie Supérieure began a collaboration with the company AEPONYX to develop a novel silicon photonic microfabrication platform integrating microelectromechanical actuators and silicon nitride-based optical waveguides. This work culminated in the demonstration of a new optical space switch. However, it also highlighted challenges and opportunities to improve the platform. The proposed project will explore how the capacity of the platform can be leveraged to create novel tunable optical filters that can adjust their bandwidth and central wavelength since they are key building blocks for future elastic optical networks. Moreover, it will investigate how the packaging of integrated optical chips can be facilitated by implementing new functionalities on the platform. The benefits of this research projects are expected to go beyond the improvement of telecommunication networks since devices built with the novel platform could find applications in many other areas, including environmental sensing and medical imaging. Furthermore, the people trained during the research program will gain valuable advanced design and manufacturing skills. The proposed program will train 1 research assistant, 3 post-doctoral researchers, 4 PhDs, 2 Master's and 4 undergraduate students.