It is estimated that by 2020 there will be 20 billion Internet of Things (IoT) connections [1]. Additionally, global mobile data traffic will increase sevenfold between 2016 and 2021, growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 47 percent from 2016 to 2022, reaching 49 exabytes per month by 2022 [2]. Most of this traffic will be video streaming along with new use cases such as augmented reality, virtual reality, and machine-to-machine communications. The current network doesn’t have the capacity to gracefully handle this explosion of traffic. The current 4G network doesn’t have the capacity to gracefully handle this explosion of traffic. 5G networks are targeting an approximately 1000x increase in wireless traffic capacity [2]. This additional capacity will enable major advances in smart cities, smart grids, robust disaster response, self-driving cars, and more.  

Silicon Photonics transceivers are an innovative on-die integration of a silicon circuit and a laser. Silicon Photonics transceivers are expected to become an important part of 5G fronthaul networks because they support high bandwidth rates, long transmission distances (up to 10 km), and extended temperature ranges (-40° to 85° C as opposed to 0° to 70° C for standard commercial-grade transceivers [3].

In this talk I will focus on our latest Silicon Photonics Transceivers Design, Fabrication and Data Analysis for high-bandwidth digital communications for short reaches applications. Our main focus is design and fabrication of integrated platforms with modulators, detectors, waveguides and other components on the same chip, all talking to one another. 

References:

1- 5G Wireless Communications Silicon Photonics, Exploring 5G Fronthaul Network Architecture Intelligence Splits and Connectivity, Intel white paper

2- Cisco, February 2017, "Cisco Visual Networking Index: Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast Update, 2016-2021." cisco.com/c/en/us/solutions/ collateral/service-provider/visual-networking-index-vni/mo