{"id":8628,"date":"2018-07-24T00:30:04","date_gmt":"2018-07-23T23:30:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/engineernewsnetwork.com\/blog\/?p=8628"},"modified":"2018-07-23T09:42:56","modified_gmt":"2018-07-23T08:42:56","slug":"scientists-harness-photonics-to-develop-faster-high-capacity-internet-networks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.engineernewsnetwork.com\/blog\/scientists-harness-photonics-to-develop-faster-high-capacity-internet-networks\/","title":{"rendered":"Scientists harness photonics to develop faster, high capacity internet networks"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Scientists are harnessing next generation lasers to create light-speed broadband connections and remove the data bottlenecks that could cause the internet to grind to a halt as demand increases.<\/p>\n<p>Researchers are incorporating VCSEL laser sources with silicon photonics to develop long wavelength, high capacity communications for the very first time, paving the way for light-speed metropolitan connectivity, and powering new \u2018smart\u2019 services like future gaming and on-demand TV.<\/p>\n<p>Employed in the Apple iPhone X to scan a user\u2019s face for Face ID, \u2018portrait mode\u2019 photos and Animoji, and in its AirPod earbuds to sense your ears, a Vertical Cavity Surface Emitting Laser (VCSEL) is a specialised laser diode that promises to revolutionise \u00a0fibre optic communications by improving efficiency and increasing data speed.<\/p>\n<p>They are cheap to manufacture, and are more efficient than traditional laser sources.<br \/>\n<script async src=\"\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js\"><\/script><br \/>\n<ins class=\"adsbygoogle\" style=\"display: block; text-align: center;\" data-ad-layout=\"in-article\" data-ad-format=\"fluid\" data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-7565662001938327\" data-ad-slot=\"7585079586\"><\/ins><br \/>\n<script>\n     (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});\n<\/script><br \/>\nFuture smart services require a massive overhaul of current internet infrastructure. Data \u2018bottlenecks\u2019 &#8211; or internet \u2018traffic jams\u2019 caused by the sheer volume of users with increasingly sophisticated devices running, music, video, gaming, AI, VR and telecommunications \u2013 urgently need to be freed up.<\/p>\n<p>These super-fast components have the potential to revolutionise smart services that consume enormous amounts of data for connected citizens of the future.<\/p>\n<p>With transmission rates up to 112 Tb\/s, sending 28 thousand HD movies would take as little as 1 second.<\/p>\n<p>While VCSELs (favoured for their rapid data transmission and low power consumption) have been used in data communications for short-distance connections in intra-data centres, using these infrared lasers for long wavelength, and high capacity communications has never been done before to connect our cities.<\/p>\n<p>Calling themselves \u2018PASSION\u2019, the research group is keen to exploit VCSEL light sources due to their high transmission efficiency and minimal power consumption.<\/p>\n<p>Project coordinator Professor Pierpaolo Boffi said: \u201cVCSELs are a bit of a buzz word at the moment. They have the advantages of low driving current, high light-power conversion efficiency and high directivity. This makes them an ideal choice for transmitting huge amounts of data in a low cost, energy efficient way.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cVCSELs will help us target the site of the \u2018bottlenecks\u2019: the Metropolitan Area Networks (MANs) interlinking users within a geographical area where all the internet traffic from a local area flows, and cope with the exponential growth in users and increasingly sophisticated services like gaming, assisted living and on-demand TV.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The PASSION team has ambitions to reduce the current power consumption of the internet by 10 times their current rates.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOur researchers are developing a flexible network architecture that will be optimised for metropolitan applications based on aggregated signal flows. A tenfold reduction in power consumption will be achieved by exploiting the full wavelength spectrum and the space dimension in a multi-core fibre.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Light-speed networks<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>US internet technology giant\u00a0Cisco predicts that internet\u00a0traffic will grow to an unprecedented 3.3 trillion gigabytes (3.3 zettabytes) per year between 2016 and 2021.<\/p>\n<p>In as little as three years from now our internet usage will reach three trillion internet video minutes per month, according to the Cisco report.<\/p>\n<p>To put this usage into perspective, this is five million years of video per month, or one million video minutes every second.<\/p>\n<p>With the exponential growth rate of users, and the enormous amount of data being sent and received through complex devices, such as gaming, TV and telecoms, the internet as we know it, so project coordinator Professor Pierpaolo Boffi believes, will grind to a halt if nothing is done.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf we are serious about having super-connected citizens, using broadband services such as telework, improved entertainment such as HD and 3D TV on demand, or gaming, remote healthcare, assisted living, enhanced social networking, \u2018eLearning\u2019 for example, we need a fibre optic network\u00a0 that is leagues ahead of where it is now.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe need a lighter and more flexible internet with low energy consumption. Otherwise, the future internet costs will be unsustainable.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In order to support a low energy, sustainable communications infrastructure with new photonics technologies, the PASSION group came together to tackle the incoming capacity limitations in optical fibre networks in our cities.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFibre optic networks for the effective transmission and routing of a huge amount of data in our cities have undergone frequent development in the last ten years. However we are now in a situation where bottlenecks in the transmission and the routing of data are becoming inevitable,\u201d Boffi said.<\/p>\n<p>PASSION will come up with new transmission, detection, and routing solutions as well as an advanced network architecture based on innovative laser sources. These solutions ensure a transmission rate of more than 100 Tb\/s per link and a switching capacity of over 1 Pb\/s per node\u201d.<\/p>\n<p><strong>VCSEL Silicon Photonics<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Developing a new technological platform for their network components, the PASSION group will incorporate VCSELs, or Vertical-Cavity Surface-Emitting Laser Sources, to silicon photonics for the further reduction of the packaging costs of such a technology platform.<\/p>\n<p>VCSELs, the key components in 3D sensing, are currently used in popular electronics platforms, for example, in range finders for smart phone cameras such as Face ID and Animoji.<\/p>\n<p>However, deploying such a technology in silicon photonics for high speed internet connections for the metropolitan area is a real challenge. PASSION project manager Paola Parolari, explains:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cVCSELs could be the next big leap in metro communications. They are already employed widely in data communications, in intra-data centre short-distance connections for example. However exploiting VCSELs, emitting at long wavelengths and integrated in silicon photonics to realise multi-channel modules with very high communication capacity can have tremendous impacts on the fibre networks of our cities in terms of cost, footprint and energy saving&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Co-ordinated by the Politecnico di Milano the PASSION consortium secured a grant of \u20ac7,535,747 from the European Commission under the H2020 funding program and was funded under the Photonics Public Private Partnership.<\/p>\n<span class=\"highlight highlight-blue\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.passion-project.eu\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">PASSION<\/a><\/span> is comprised of 14 partners with participants from seven different European countries: (Italy) Politecnico di Milano and SM Optics; (Spain) CTTC, Telefonica and VLC Photonics; (The Netherlands) Technische Universiteit Eindhoven and Effect Photonics; (Finland) VTT; (Germany) Vertilas; (Israel) OpSys Technologies; (France) EPIC; and from 2 extra-Europe countries: (Japan) NICT and (South Korea) ETRI and ChemOptics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Scientists are harnessing next generation lasers to create light-speed broadband connections and remove the data bottlenecks that could cause the internet to grind to a halt as demand increases. Researchers are incorporating VCSEL laser sources with silicon photonics to develop long wavelength, high capacity communications for the very first time, paving the way for light-speed &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","","category-process"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Scientists harness photonics to develop faster, high capacity internet networks - Engineer News Network<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Scientists are harnessing next generation lasers to create light-speed broadband connections and remove the data bottlenecks that could cause the internet to grind to a halt as demand increases\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.engineernewsnetwork.com\/blog\/scientists-harness-photonics-to-develop-faster-high-capacity-internet-networks\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Scientists harness photonics to develop faster, high capacity internet networks - 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