Researchers of the ITEAM Institute located at the Universitat Politècnica de València have collaborated with the McGill University in Montreal and the Eindhoven University of Technology in Netherlands to attain a scientific milestone in optical communications.
The researchers have developed a chip that is used for optical routers and has the potential to operate at 100 times more speed than the current chips. This research development has been published in the Optical Express magazine.
The chip routes the optical packets directly and includes basic functionalities in an area measuring approximately 100,000 times smaller than other modules. This enables the routing operation to take place in a faster manner. This research development is substantial both for its commercial application and the scientific-technical aspect. Researchers have for the first time, executed the routing technique by using monolithic integration, which enables the deployment of all necessary modules on the same chip substrate. The chip’s design utilizes components, which can be conveniently integrated and does not generate additional expenses to production lines of present utilities of integrated optical circuits.
The crux of the fiber-optic networks functions is setting up of circuits or connections that are similar to those networks that are set up while making a phone call. The connections preserve network resources even during non-transmission of information, thereby making them ineffective.
The researchers developed a solution by segmenting information into smaller packets or pieces. Each of the packets might follow a dissimilar route from the source to destination to optimize the utilization of available resources. The resources routed the packets, irrespective of the path followed by the packets. This enables the packets to reach the destination in the appropriate order.
To effectively route the packets, the labels contained in the packets, are processed in the network’s intermediate nodes. To implement this technique, the labels are required to convert the optical information into an electrical format. But this involves two key problems. First of all, the information needs to be converted and secondly the electrical processing potential needs to be restricted in speed.