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xingfenzhen
integrated solution using CMOS i guess. i believe the current solutions are ...
Joseph.Schachner
Re: "According to Xu, the Rice team's device can potentially modulate a signal ...
'Antenna-on-a-chip' speeds infrared light transmission
Dylan McGrath
11/16/2012 3:41 PM EST
SAN FRANCISCO—Researchers at Rice University have developed a micron-scale spatial light modulator (SLM) that they say has the potential to improve the capability of optical information processing systems by several orders of magnitude.
The Rice "antenna on a chip" is similar to those used in sensing and imaging devices. But inlike other devices in two-dimensional semiconducting chips, the Rice chips work in three-dimensional "free space."
According to Qianfan Xu, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at Rice, the SLM chip differs dramatically from current state of the art technology.
"With this device, we can make very large arrays with high yield," Xu said. "Our device is based on silicon and can be fabricated in a commercial CMOS factory, and it can run at very high speed."
From left: Rice graduate students Ciyuan Qiu, Jianbo Chen and Yang Xia, and Qianfan Xu, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering.
Xu said the antennas would not be suitable for general computing, but could be used for optical processing tasks that are comparable in power to supercomputers.
In today's computers, light is confined to two-dimensional circuitry, tied to waveguides that move it from here to there, Xu said. In the paper, Xu and his colleagues maintain 2-D systems fail to take advantage of "the massive multiplexing capability of optics" made possible by the fact that "multiple light beams can propagate in the same space without affecting each other."
Conventional integrated photonics relies on an array of pixels, the transmission of which can be changed at very high speed, Wu said. "When you put that in the path of an optical beam, you can change either the intensity or the phase of the light that comes out the other side," he said.
Next: How it works
The Rice "antenna on a chip" is similar to those used in sensing and imaging devices. But inlike other devices in two-dimensional semiconducting chips, the Rice chips work in three-dimensional "free space."
According to Qianfan Xu, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at Rice, the SLM chip differs dramatically from current state of the art technology.
"With this device, we can make very large arrays with high yield," Xu said. "Our device is based on silicon and can be fabricated in a commercial CMOS factory, and it can run at very high speed."
Xu and his Rice colleagues detailed their antenna-on-a-chip for light modulation this week in Nature's open-access, online journal Scientific Reports.
From left: Rice graduate students Ciyuan Qiu, Jianbo Chen and Yang Xia, and Qianfan Xu, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering.
Credit: Jeff Fitlow/Rice University
Xu said the antennas would not be suitable for general computing, but could be used for optical processing tasks that are comparable in power to supercomputers.
In today's computers, light is confined to two-dimensional circuitry, tied to waveguides that move it from here to there, Xu said. In the paper, Xu and his colleagues maintain 2-D systems fail to take advantage of "the massive multiplexing capability of optics" made possible by the fact that "multiple light beams can propagate in the same space without affecting each other."
Conventional integrated photonics relies on an array of pixels, the transmission of which can be changed at very high speed, Wu said. "When you put that in the path of an optical beam, you can change either the intensity or the phase of the light that comes out the other side," he said.
Next: How it works
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Joseph.Schachner
11/19/2012 11:35 AM EST
Re: "According to Xu, the Rice team's device can potentially modulate a signal at more than 10 gigabits per second." Nice, but what is the major advantage vs 10G, 40G and 100Gb/s optical solutions in use or being deployed now?
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xingfenzhen
11/20/2012 4:58 PM EST
integrated solution using CMOS i guess. i believe the current solutions are either has discrete optical front ends or uses expensive InP ICs.
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