The Royal Institution for the Advancement of Learning / Mcgill University

Meer Sakib

Odile Liboiron-Ladouceur

Md Shafiqul Hai

Monireh Moayedi Pour Fard

Chunshu Zhang

As photonics evolves closer and closer to the electronic processing elements in order to meet the demands of speed, latency of evolving data communications networks and data centers the inventors, rather than seeking direct monolithically integrated CMOS based processing photonic and electronic elements, have established a different route. Namely replace the computer hubs/electrical bridges interconnecting the multiple core logic chipset elements with a photonic bridge. In this manner high risk chip-to-chip photonic point-to-point links are replaced with photonic SOCs that leverage photonics bandwidth density attribute rather than its bandwidth distance attributes. An SOI based Electronic Embedded Photonic Switching Fabric is presented supporting, for example, N&#xd7;MGb/s interconnections exploiting N channels of MGb/s wherein each channel of exploits S WDM channels of TGb/s. Embodiments of the invention also support high density optical interconnection via vertical grating couplers and multicore fibers.

Methods and systems for board level photonic bridges

Broadband access networks are driving the upgrade of DWDM networks from 10 Gb/s per channel to more spectrally-efficient 40 Gb/s or 100 Gb/s. Signal quality degradation due to linear and non-linear impairments are significant and error control coding and signal processing solutions play increasingly key roles in meeting increasing demand, providing improved quality of service, and reduced cost. It would be beneficial to reduce the power consumption of optical receivers for optical links exploiting for example LPDC encoding. Accordingly, the inventors have established a low complexity soft-decision front-end compatible with deployable LDPC codes in next-generation optical transmission systems. Beneficially the optical receiver design can be retro-fitted into deployed hard-decision based optical systems and replaces the 3-to-2 encoder of the prior art in the electrical portion of the receiver with a single gate design. Further, the design may act as a 2-bit Flash ADC in multimode fiber based optical receivers.

Growing community of inventors

Montreal, Canada

Meer Sakib