ALLEGRO EU’s Post

Metasurface antenna could enable future 6G communications networks A team led by researchers from the University of Glasgow has developed an innovative wireless communications antenna that combines the unique properties of metamaterials with sophisticated signal processing to deliver a new peak of performance. In a paper published in the IEEE Open Journal of Antennas and Propagation, titled "60 GHz Programmable Dynamic Metasurface Antenna (DMA) for Next-Generation Communication, Sensing, and Imaging Applications: From Concept to Prototype," the researchers showcase their development of a prototype digitally coded dynamic metasurface antenna, or DMA, controlled through high-speed field-programmable gate array (FPGA). Their DMA is the first in the world designed and demonstrated at the operating frequency of 60 GHz millimeter-wave (mmWave) band—the portion of the spectrum reserved by international law for use in industrial, scientific, and medical (ISM) applications. The antenna's ability to operate in the higher mmWave band could enable it to become a key piece of hardware in the still-developing field of advanced beamforming metasurface antennas. https://lnkd.in/gASUJj3w

Microwave photonics chip

The paper "Roadmapping the next generation of silicon photonics" published on nature communications identifies and summarizes the challenges and opportunities in further research in silicon photonics technology. The authors are the iconic figures in this promising and challenging field. The significant increase in demand for data bandwidth and accelerated computing requirements due to AI advancements, silicon photonics technology undoubtedly plays a crucial role, but the technical challenges are indeed significant. https://lnkd.in/gt_pwSQj

Breakthrough in Microwave Photonic Chip Technology: Revolutionizing Analog Signal Processing and Computation Introduction: Professor Wang Cheng and his team at City University of Hong Kong have developed a groundbreaking microwave photonic (MWP) chip. This chip utilizes optics for ultrafast analog electronic signal processing and computation. It outperforms traditional electronic processors by being 1,000 times faster and consuming less energy. Applications: The chip has diverse applications, including 5/6G wireless communication systems, high-resolution radar systems, artificial intelligence, computer vision, and image/video processing. Publication: The team's research findings were published in the prestigious journal Nature under the title "Integrated Lithium Niobate Microwave Photonic Processing Engine." The collaboration involved researchers from The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK). Challenges in RF Systems: The expansion of wireless networks, IoT, and cloud-based services has created significant demands on radio frequency (RF) systems. Microwave photonics (MWP) technology addresses these challenges by employing optical components for microwave signal generation, transmission, and manipulation. Previous Limitations: Integrated MWP systems faced hurdles in achieving ultrahigh-speed analog signal processing alongside chip-scale integration, high fidelity, and low power consumption. Solution Overview: To overcome these challenges, the team developed an MWP system that integrates ultrafast electro-optic (EO) conversion with low-loss, multifunctional signal processing on a single chip. This approach had not been achieved before. Technology Highlights: The chip is based on a thin-film lithium niobate (LN) platform capable of performing multi-purpose processing and computation tasks for analog signals. It offers high-speed analog computation with ultrabroad processing bandwidths of 67 GHz and excellent computation accuracies. Research Background: The team has been researching the integrated LN photonic platform for several years. In 2018, collaborators at Harvard University and Nokia Bell Labs developed the world's first CMOS-compatible integrated electro-optic modulators on the LN platform. This laid the foundation for the current breakthrough. LN's Significance: LN is often called the "silicon of photonics" due to its importance in photonics, comparable to silicon in microelectronics. Impact and Future Prospects: This work introduces a new research field, LN microwave photonics, enabling compact MWP chips with high signal fidelity and low latency. It represents a significant advancement in chip-scale analog electronic processing and computing engines.

The TOP (Telecommunications, Optics and Photonics) Conference took place in London last week. Sharing an insightful perspective from our expert, Steven Jones... "It was great attending the TOP Conference [1] in London last week - a meeting predominantly focused on optical communications but also touching on a number of other exciting applications in optics.  Some of the key highlights for me were: 1) What's next for fiber optic communications? We are reaching the Shannon limit with current DWDM approaches, and this has already started to impact the transmitted data growth curves. So, what's next? The obvious choices are to expand the wavelength bands or add additional bands to increase capacity. To facilitate this broader wavelength range hollow core optical fibers are a key enabling technology and one where the UK is well positioned to be impactful. Moving beyond increasing bandwidth, the industry is likely to look towards a paradigm shift into spatial division multiplexing to keep up with demands over the next 10 years, with coupled multi-core optical fibers providing an intriguing pathway to unlock this next tranche of increased data capacity. #Lumerical and #Zemax are excellent tools for designing fiber optic systems and how to couple to these systems. 2) How can we decrease energy usage? Datacentres are growing at an exponential rate, in part driven by the demands of AI. While a crucial enabling technology, their energy demands are significant - for example, some estimates attribute 18% or Irelands current metered energy usage as being due to datacentres and this could rise to 70% by 2030 [2]. As datacentres grow in connectivity between nodes (fueled in part by the "end of Moore's law") inter-node communications become increasingly critical and energy efficiency is becoming a key figure of merit (both to reduce energy consumption/cost and to alleviate thermal issues). This provides an opportunity to move optical communications and computation "up the chain" to benefit from the decreased power consumption of optical components at high bit-rates. #Lumerical is a brilliant platform for both individual component design, and also for system level simulations using #Lumerical #INTERCONNECT; and of course, the coupling with #Zemax to address the challenge of co-packaged optics." [1] https://topconference.com/ [2] https://lnkd.in/gx-3wf5i #TOPConference #telecommunications #optics #photonics #CADFEM #Ansys

Solving differential equations, processing ultrafast microwave signals and performing image recognition - using beams of light! This has now been demonstrated on an integrated photonic chip based on a lithium niobate platform, at CMOS-compatible voltages. The chip shows major advantages as compared to traditional electronic processors in terms of speed and energy efficiency!

An example of : Tradeoff & Work in progress : How silicon photonics and co-packaged optics combined to improvise the data rates and the countermeasures the industry is doing to alleviate the issue especially if a failure occurs.

A good Sunday reading on the technological state of the Silicon Photonics industry Shekhar, S., Bogaerts, W., Chrostowski, L., Bowers, J. E., Hochberg, M., Soref, R., & Shastri, B. J. (2024). Roadmapping the next generation of silicon photonics. Nature Communications, 15(1), 751. Excerpts: "Photonic foundries face a significant dilemma: Their customers often demand that they customize their processes, which involves a great deal of R&D expense, and endangers the reliability and yield of the final wafers. Driving customers into a standard process is the solution for this, but in order to do that, the customers need to see significant value in stability and in a settled PDK [Process Design Kit] and IP ecosystem; only a few designers see the world this way, because so many of the members of the design community today were trained as device people, rather than SoC designers. Changing process parameters often seems to such designers to be the easiest way to generate performance differentiation, but the downstream costs for such changes can be very high from a reliability and process maintenance perspective. As more designers who are used to the idea of settled PDKs graduate and come into the field, disruptive process changes will slowly become less and less common; the foundries will also likely grow ever more resistant Ito process changes from customers that are not justified by substantial purchase commitments."

The move to optics and the replacement of electrons with protons is a fundamental shift in communications technology. NTT is at the forefront of this transformation as they lead the charge of Innovative Optical and Wireless Network (#IOWN) initiative with other members of the IOWN Global Forum. IOWN is about transitioning to a world that replaces electrons with photons, bringing optics closer to the end user. This evolution towards photonics is crucial as we face the limitations of electronics at smaller scales, interference issues and the need for quantum computing advancements. #NTTDATA #IOWN