Electronics and photonics have long had a complementary coexistence across multiple application areas. Nonetheless, an ideal partnership of these two realms was made challenging in large part by the enormous frequencies of lightwaves. About two decades ago, this limitation was overcome with the invention of the laser frequency comb. Combs provide a coherent link between electronics and photonics, and because the link is bidirectional, performance attributes previously unique to each can now be shared. Their implementation has been transformative for time keeping, frequency metrology, precision spectroscopy, microwave-generation, ranging and other technologies. More recently still, high-Q nonlinear optical microresonators, have enabled chip-scale frequency combs. I will review efforts to fully integrate comb systems around these new ‘microcombs,’ along with the physical principles of the devices themselves. Finally, I will consider the revolutionary impact this chip-scale unification of the optoelectronic spectrum can have on photonic instrumentation and consumer products.

Japan Broadcasting Corporation (NHK) Science & Technology Research Laboratories (STRL) has long been consistently opening up new horizons for broadcasting. Its recent R&D on 8K ultra-high-definition television―the ultimate two-dimensional television―came to fruition as a regular satellite broadcasting service in Japan in December 2018, with 8K gradually penetrating media and other industries globally. The 8K specifications were determined based on psychophysical experiments to effectively produce an immersive and realistic experience with a two-dimensional screen. STRL is continuing to enhance user experiences. Aside from two-dimensional displays, today there are media devices such as head-mounted displays, augmented reality glasses, three-dimensional displays, and haptic devices. STRL is researching these devices to enhance their performance from the perspective of visual psychology and cognitive science. It is also developing three-dimensional information processing technologies and artificial intelligence aiming for new content presentations with new immersive devices. Conveying sensations other than sight and sound will create innovative sensory experiences that provide unprecedented immersion. A new media scheme that utilizes various delivery platforms such as broadcasting, the internet, and 5G is also being studied to produce new viewing experiences.

Introduction to SPIE Photonics West OPTO conference 11712: Metro and Data Center Optical Networks and Short-Reach Links IV.

In this paper we propose a novel high-performance computing system architecture and an adaptive routing protocol for accelerating distributed deep learning applications. Our testbed demonstrates optical circuit switch-enabled bandwidth steering through the network’s configuration. We also demonstrate that the adaptive routing protocol can effectively balance the traffic loading to enable bandwidth congestion mitigation thereby reducing the communication latency due to bandwidth congestion

In this talk, we will compare the time-delay feedforward neural network (FNN) and reservoir computing (RC) approaches for the equalization of short-reach intensity-modulated transmission. FNN and RC are benchmarked for 32-GBd on-off keying (OOK) transmission both numerically and experimentally. Additionally, a new receiver architecture relying on hybrid optoelectronic processing is proposed. By spectrally slicing the received signal, independently detecting the slices and jointly processing them with an NN-based equalizer (both FNN and RC), significant extension reach is shown both numerically and experimentally.

We present a silicon-based Chaotic-Cavity Optical Physically Unclonable Function(CCO-PUF) embedded inside smart-sensor based devices utilizing nonlinear-optical properties of bi-axial crystals present inside a chaotic cavity. The photonic circuit produces statistically diverse yet reproducible multimodal photonic outputs that provides a large statistical degree of freedom for generating randomness in the device responses upon electrical as well as photonic triggering that can be employed for producing authentication keys for users seeking on-demand access to IoT devices . Such PUFs can be very robust against side-channel attacks and machine-learning attacks for their wide operability range, complex nano-photonic operation and strong degree of pseudo-randomness.

We report on progress building quantum secured quantum communications networks in the UK. There are metropolitan scale networks in Cambridge and Bristol, quantum access networks in Cambridge, the 410km UK Quantum Network connecting Cambridge and Bristol and the 160km UKQN/Tel connecting Cambridge and BT Adastral Park. The Cambridge Quantum Network operates with secure key rates in excess of 2Mb/s. The UKQN has demonstrated the longest, highest attenuation single span QKD field trial ever demonstrated, with a length of 130km and greater than 28dB attenuation achieving a secure key rate of 2.7 ± 0.3 kb/s over a 90 day duration

(INVITED) Novel photonic technologies based on single-mode vertical cavity surface emitting lasers (VCSELs) at long wavelengths can be employed to alternatively support the access network evolution towards 50 Gb/s propagation in passive optical networks (PONs) and the future metropolitan area network (MAN) handling multi-Tb/s traffic in a very dynamic scenario. Both needs can be satisfied by adopting VCSEL direct modulation with multicarrier modulation formats in combination with distinct transmitter architectures and receiver solutions to support different aggregate capacity requirements and transmission reaches. Moreover, flexibility, link adaptation and efficient resource usage are obtained allowing future sustainable optical networks.

In order to meet the recent vast demands of ICT bandwidth, high speed optical transceivers, such as 100, 200 and 400Gbps, have been developed and installed with extremely high speed. In these circumstances, the de-fact standardization bodies such as IEEE802.3/OIF and some MSA organizations have played important roles in the industry in order to lead the proper concepts and designs of the leading edge high speed optical transceivers. Reviewing the recent activities of these standardization bodies, the future migration towards 800G intra-datacenter transceivers and 400G-ZR/ ZR+ and 800G/1.6T Metro optical transceivers are examined and estimated from the view point of technology and economics.

Metro area network (MAN) connectivity is rapidly evolving towards a much more dense, complex and diverse scenario to be dynamically addressed with flexible cost-efficient and high capacity technology/architecture solutions, dealing with an even more open and disaggregated paradigm. In this work, sliceable bandwidth/bitrate variable transceiver architectures adopting modular approach and suitable photonic technologies (such as VCSEL) and enabling to efficiently and dynamically exploit both spectral and spatial dimensions are discussed, considering design, implementation, cost and flexibility aspects. Recent numerical and experimental results are reported, showing how to enable scalability towards supporting multi-Tb/s connectivity in flexible and dynamic large MAN.

Directly modulated (DML) distributed feedback (DFB) lasers are an important component in data center communications. Their small size and low power consumption make them excel in uncooled operation and make them cost-efficient. Usage of AlGaInAs allows the laser to operate more efficiently even in higher temperatures. Main concern for these components is that they must be operated with relatively high input current to achieve the bandwidth requirements. This challenge of DML-DFB lasers can be overcome by optimizing the device performance and reliability. This work demonstrates Modulight’s process of developing highly reliable 25G DML-DFB lasers operating in O-band.

Digital coherent reception is an attractive candidate to expand the channel capacity of intra-datacenter networks. With this approach, the DSP circuit must compensate IQ power/phase mismatch with the lowest possible power consumption. In this paper, we propose a novel DSP configuration suitable for intra-datacenter transmission systems. The proposed DSP circuit offers polarization-mode demultiplexing, compensation of IQ power/phase mismatch, and estimation of carrier phase and frequency offset. The proposed DSP circuit consists of three-stage one-tap FIR filters; so complicated calculations are not required. Its good demodulation performance is confirmed by simulations and experiments.

We present a scalable and novel modular optical metro core node architecture employing photonic WDM integrated switches for multi-Terabits/second operation. Multi-degree ROADM nodes are used at the metro-core level, while access network is constituted by low-cost 2-degree ROADM nodes. Photonic integrated switches are designed as building blocks to realize this modular architecture, namely WDM switches with express and add/drop ports, WSS aggregation/disaggregation functions for merging/dropping the network traffic and multi-cast switch (MCS). Two integration approaches, monolithic on InP and hybrid integration of SiPh with InP, are followed to enable low loss switching. Applications will be discussed and experimental results reported.

In high performance computer systems and large-scale data centers, data movement becomes a critical problem. To overcome this problem, co-packaged optics are attracted much attention. We proposed a new package substrate called active optical package (AOP) substrate which is a Si-photonics-die embedded organic package substrate. In this paper, two optical coupling technologies for the AOP substrate will be presented with some measurement results of loss and optical signal transmission. One coupling technology is mirror-based interlayer optical coupling of Si and polymer waveguides, and another is passive optical coupling of polymer waveguides and single-mode fibers with a low-cost MT-ferrule-compatible optical connector.

Research of Yole Développement aims to give a comprehensive account of the forces driving the optical transceivers market, technology and industry. We provide macro trend analyses for both datacom and telecom, review the trends in data centers impacting the optical module market and elucidate comprehensive technology analysis of optical transceivers highlighting the trends for application from intra-data centers up to long-haul. Furthermore, evaluation of silicon photonics and InP technology platforms in term of technology and market dynamics is also reported. We analyze market and provide forecasts for revenue and volume of optical transceivers for 2017-2025 split by applications and speeds.

In this work, we propose a Topology-Aware, Globally-direct and Oblivious (TAGO) routing protocol for Flexspander reconfigurable networks. TAGO combines the features of both multi-path routing and direct routing, by sending local traffic non-minimally via multiple paths within a pod, and global traffic directly. This allows TAGO to fully utilize the reconfigurable global links and rich intra-pod path-diversity in Flexspander networks. Simulation results based on realistic HPC traces show up to 2.2x throughput improvement over baseline routing algorithms like Equal Cost Multiple Path (ECMP) and Valiant Load Balancing (VLB).

This invited talk will introduce several useful means to boost federated learning carried out over passive optical networks for edge computing. One way is to introduce bandwidth slicing that is able to reserve network resource dedicated to the learning task and can well address the issues brought by stragglers during the training process. Another way is to devise aggregation function carried out at intermedium network nodes capable of significantly reducing the amount of traffic to be exchanged for global training while not impacting the learning performance. Simulation results show that the FL training efficiency can be significantly improved while achieving the same level of learning accuracy. For the specific FL task implemented in the context of edge computing, the training time can be saved up to 36 % to achieve the maximum learning accuracy.

Future 5G and beyond services rely on the network slicing concept. End-to-end network slices comprise multiple network segments, including optical and data centres networks. The provisioning of network slices is a challenging task that has to consider the characteristics of the different technologies to satisfactorily map the requirements coming from the services. On the other hand, there is a rising trend of quality assurance to satisfy the requirements of services deployed, requiring the runtime maintenance of quality of service/experience of the deployed slices. We present a framework that enables the provisioning and orchestration of network slices in multi-domain/segment optical networks.

In this paper, we review recent work on the development of a novel low-complexity equalizer that can enable single-lane >100 Gb/s short-reach optical links based on carrierless amplitude and phase modulation. This equalizer, named the CAP equalizer, can mitigate the transmission impairments in the link due to a non-ideal channel frequency response, providing significant performance advantage over conventional FFE and DFE equalizers and enabling higher data rates and longer reach. Its use is demonstrated in a VCSEL-based MMF link achieving data transmission of 112 and 124 Gb/s over 100 m OM4 MMF when used as a post- and pre-equalizer respectively.

For next-generation submarine cable systems, multi-core fiber (MCF) is a promising technology with the analogy of SDM1 to achieve more increases of cable capacity. In particular, 125-um standard cladding MCF is paid attention to because high productivity and high mechanical reliability are expected as an existing single mode fiber (SMF). In this paper, we would like to introduce the feasibility study of ultra-long-haul transmission over standard-cladding 4-core multi-core fibers and discuss standard-cladding MCF systems for next-generation submarine cable networks.