Photonic Integrated Circuits on InP technology plAtform enaBling low cost metro netwOrks and next generation PONs
[January 2021 – December 2023]
PCRL coordinated the PICaboo Project. The rapid expansion of cloud applications, 5G, and IoT pushed modern networks to their limits, requiring higher capacity and lower latency. Photonic integration emerged as a key enabling technology to address these challenges and introduce new products and services to the market.
PICaboo developed novel building blocks on the InP PIC platform of TUe and III-V Lab, following the generic foundry model to enhance PIC performance and reduce development costs. Compact models of these building blocks were created and compiled into PDK-compatible libraries, enabling designers to explore their use across a wide range of applications and maximizing their exploitation potential.
PICaboo’s PIC demonstrators transformed optical metro and access networks by improving speed, reducing footprint, lowering power consumption, and cutting costs. The high-speed EAM-based transmitters incorporated all-optical equalization functionality on-chip, scaling PON line rates to 50/100Gb/s while minimizing the need for electronic signal pre-processing to meet the 29dB power budget within dispersion limits.
Both single EAM-MZM and coherent EAM-IQM transmitter PICs achieved significant power consumption reductions—50% and 65%, respectively, compared to 50G EML solutions—while lowering overall costs by nearly 20%. Additionally, the dual-polarization coherent receiver PIC featured integrated reset-free phase and polarization control, allowing complex DSP functions to be performed directly in the optical domain. This led to power consumption reductions of over 30% and cost benefits of 3.6x compared to standard coherent transceivers, thanks to simplified direct detection DSPs and low-cost tunable lasers. These advancements positioned PICaboo as an attractive technology for the 20-80km DCI range.
Exploitation of PIC demonstrators was pursued by NOKIA and ADVA, while VLC leveraged the developed PDK libraries to facilitate the adoption of PICaboo building blocks by end-users.
