Overcoming Capacity and Energy Limits in Optical Communications

克服光通信中的容量和能量限制

基本信息

批准号：
EP/K003038/1
负责人：
Radan Slavik
金额：
$ 120.9万
依托单位：
University of Southampton
依托单位国家：
英国
项目类别：
Fellowship
财政年份：
2012
资助国家：
英国
起止时间：
2012 至无数据
项目状态：
已结题

来源：
https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=EP%2FK003038%2F1
关键词：
Overcoming Capacity Energy Limits Optical

项目摘要

The world's Internet infrastructure is of ever increasing importance to both the national and global economy, enabling ever more efficient international trade and a host of new business opportunities. As a result data traffic on the world's networks has steadily been growing at around 40% per year over the past decade and no respite in this trend is anticipated for the foreseeable future. However, it is becoming impractical to satisfy this increased demand through the obvious and traditional measures such as improving spectral efficiency and utilization, installing more optical fibres, and increasing the number or size of the data centres, since today's telecommunications infrastructure is already estimated to be responsible for about 2% of world carbon emission (more than the aviation industry!). Consequently further capacity scaling using the existing technology is likely to have a significant impact on the environment. Another key issue is that the heat dissipation in data centres has reached its limit per unit volume, which effectively means that if current technological platforms are used to upgrade capacity then this will require new strategies for thermal management, likely further increasing the power consumption, cost and complexity. Clearly such a situation is unsustainable in the longer term. Current networks are mostly limited - both in terms of capacity and energy efficiency - by the architectures/technologies used. These in turn have traditionally been driven by the philosophy of designing the network so as to minimize the usage of expensive and relatively unreliable optical components and exploiting the maturity of electronics - with its potential for cost reduction when mass produced - to do the majority of the signal routing, processing and transmission impairment mitigation. However, this approach - given the previously discussed energy scaling constraints - will not be sustainable moving forward, dictating a change in this approach. Specifically it will be necessary to increase the amount of optics in the network to reduce the burden placed upon the electronics. I strongly believe that the transition to more optically empowered systems is simply unavoidable. The aim of this proposal is to investigate the possibility of employing the array of new optical components and subsystems that I am currently researching (which includes Optical Comb generators, injection locked lasers and devices that amplify signals differently depending on their phase) into optical networks, in a manner that allows for scaling to larger data transmission capacities with a simultaneous reduction in power consumption and/or better thermal management characteristics. Today, there are several main concepts relevant to future optical communications, all of them relying on having higher quality optical signals (e.g., signal-to-noise ratio), or tight control of the coherence properties of optical signals carrying independent data streams (called 'superchannel' technologies). My current research deals with development of high purity (low noise) Optical Combs that allow for tight control of coherence - promising to give both the key parameters necessary. Within the Fellowship, I plan to implement this technology into the generation and reception part of optical links. Higher signal-to-noise ratio transmitters and lower-noise and higher speed demultiplexing of data at the detection side should allow for extended reach without the need for additional in-line amplification and allow the use of modulation formats carrying more information inside the same spectral bandwidth. Among other advantages, the energy-per-transmitted-bit can be reduced in both these cases. However, I will not limit my research to optical communications and will investigate other fields where the results might also be helpful - e.g., ultraprecise transfer of time and frequency. I will work in close collaboration with academic as well as non-academic partners.

世界互联网基础设施对国家和全球经济的重要性日益增加，使国际贸易变得更加高效，并带来大量新的商机。因此，在过去十年中，全球网络上的数据流量以每年 40% 左右的速度稳步增长，并且在可预见的未来，这一趋势预计不会有任何缓解。然而，通过提高频谱效率和利用率、安装更多光纤以及增加数据中心的数量或规模等显而易见的传统措施来满足这种不断增长的需求变得不切实际，因为当今的电信基础设施估计已经约占世界碳排放量的 2%（比航空业还多！）。因此，使用现有技术进一步扩展容量可能会对环境产生重大影响。另一个关键问题是数据中心的散热已经达到了单位体积的极限，这实际上意味着如果利用现有的技术平台来升级容量，则需要新的热管理策略，可能会进一步增加功耗、成本和复杂性。显然，从长远来看，这种情况是不可持续的。当前的网络在容量和能源效率方面大多受到所使用的架构/技术的限制。传统上，这些都是由设计网络的理念驱动的，以尽量减少昂贵且相对不可靠的光学元件的使用，并利用电子技术的成熟度（在大规模生产时具有降低成本的潜力）来完成大部分工作。信号路由、处理和传输减损减轻。然而，考虑到之前讨论的能源规模限制，这种方法将无法持续向前发展，因此需要改变这种方法。具体来说，有必要增加网络中光学器件的数量，以减轻电子设备的负担。我坚信，向光学增强系统的过渡是不可避免的。该提案的目的是研究将我目前正在研究的一系列新型光学组件和子系统（包括光梳发生器、注入锁定激光器和根据相位不同地放大信号的设备）应用到光网络中的可能性，以允许扩展至更大的数据传输容量同时降低功耗和/或更好的热管理特性的方式。如今，有几个与未来光通信相关的主要概念，所有这些概念都依赖于更高质量的光信号（例如信噪比），或者严格控制承载独立数据流的光信号的相干特性（称为“超级通道”技术）。我目前的研究涉及高纯度（低噪声）光梳的开发，该光梳可以严格控制相干性 - 有望提供必要的两个关键参数。在奖学金范围内，我计划将这项技术应用到光链路的生成和接收部分。更高信噪比的发射机以及检测侧更低噪声和更高速的数据解复用应允许扩展范围，而无需额外的串联放大，并允许使用在同一频谱内携带更多信息的调制格式带宽。除其他优点外，在这两种情况下都可以降低每传输比特的能量。然而，我不会将我的研究局限于光通信，并将调查其他领域，这些领域的结果也可能有帮助——例如，时间和频率的超精确传输。我将与学术和非学术合作伙伴密切合作。