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[Press Release] IPEC online seminar of the global optoelectronic industry concluded

2021-06-30 15:39:35Source:CIOE

On June 29, the 2021 Online Seminar of the Global Optoelectronic Industry was successfully held. This seminar was co-hosted by the International Photonics & Electronics Committee (IPEC) and China International Optoelectronic Exposition (CIOE) and co-organized by the European Photonics Industry Consortium (EPIC). With the theme of "Unleash the Potential of Optoelectronics, Drive Standards and Industry Advancement", this seminar explored high-bandwidth and large-capacity optoelectronic communication technologies and popular photoelectric sensing applications. This seminar attracted representatives from world-renowned universities, top scientific research institutes, and optoelectronic partners, including the University of Southern California, University of Tokyo, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, McMaster University, KDDI Research, Inc. in Japan, Fraunhofer Heinrich-Hertz Institute (HHI) in Germany, China Telecom, Huawei, and Source Photonics.


IPEC webinar of the global optoelectronic industry concluded


This online seminar was moderating by Dr. Hua Zhang, Member of BoD at IPEC, Hisense Broadband.


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Li Junjie, IPEC Chairman and Chief Expert of Optical Transmission at China Telecom, kicked off the seminar by introducing IPEC. As a standards organization, IPEC is committed to establishing an open, transparent, and impartial optoelectronic standard platform to promote the coordination and innovation of optoelectronic standards. Since its establishment in September 2020, IPEC has attracted close attention from the industry. Currently, IPEC has admitted 15 members from different fields of the industry. This seminar aimed to gather experts to share their insights into the development direction of the industry while driving sustainable, healthy development. At the same time, IPEC is seeking new partnerships with more industry organizations and individuals.

 

IPEC introduction


The first half of the seminar focused on challenging the limits of optical transmission. Wei Leping, Chairman of Technology Steering Committee of China Telecom, shared his opinions on network development trends from the perspective of carriers. He believes that future networks will feature all-optical, large capacity, cloudification, and intelligence. He also pointed out that all-optical networks will coordinate with 5G/6G for development. In addition to an optimal solution for 5G/6G at the transport end, all-optical networks are a benign competitor of 5G/6G at the access end. In an industry Internet scenario, all-optical networks and 5G/6G have different focuses. 5G/6G applies to mobile scenarios. For fixed scenarios, such as telemedicine and remote surgery, optical networks are more stable and reliable.

 

Trends and challenges of All-Optical Network from the perspective of carriers


Currently, 400G ultra-broadband optical networks are deployed on a large scale in different scenarios, ranging from short-haul interconnection to long-haul WDM transmission, and continue to evolve to 800G/1.6T. Ultra-broadband networks pose higher requirements on and challenges to optical components and chips. Liang Yibo, Senior Product Director of HiSilicon Optoelectronics, introduced the latest progress of Beyond 400G optoelectronic standards. He noted that 800G transmission will be standardized after 2025. In this context, coherent technology may be applied in short-haul data interconnection such as 800G transmission over 10 km and 1.6T transmission over 2 km in the future.

 

Challenges and standard development of ultra-broadband optoelectronic component


Facing the advent of the Internet of Everything (IoE) era, the industry has to continuously expand the application of optical communications in various scenarios. Prof. Alan Willner explained the cutting-edge research of optical communications, and analyzed the possibility of using free space optics (FSO) technology to expand the carrier range to the terahertz and visible light spectra. This will greatly broaden the application scope of optical communications for long-distance, high-bandwidth, and low-latency transmission in the sea, land, air, and aerospace scenarios. In addition, Prof. Willner shared the latest FSO research progress in high-bandwidth transmission.

 

Optical communications innovations for free-space and optical-signal-processing applications


 In the conventional transmission technology field, the competition between coherent and direct detection is fierce. Architecture using self-homodyne coherent detection features a good balance between costs and power consumption. Prof. Tang Ming from the Huazhong University of Science and Technology commented that this architecture is a typical simplified coherent solution and is expected to be widely used in transmission of 800G and higher rates. It also poses many new challenges to digital signal processing, optoelectronic devices, and optical links.

 

Self-homodyne coherent interconnection for short-reach: prospects and challenges to devices


With the explosive growth of large-capacity data center applications, short-distance and high-rate transmission scenarios raise higher requirements on and challenges to optical components. Prof. Li Xun from the McMaster University shared the research progress of high-speed lasers and modulators. Currently, the 3 dB bandwidth of DMLs using the multi-segment architecture can reach 60–80 GHz, meeting the requirements of 100G NRZ and 200G PAM4. New technologies such as transistor lasers and spin polarization modulated lasers can increase the modulation bandwidth to 120–200 GHz, which may break the modulation rate bottleneck of traditional technologies.


State-of-the-art high-speed laser/modulator for short reach optical interconnects


In the second half of the seminar, participants discussed new optoelectronic application fields such as optical sensing. In opening remarks, Carlos Lee, Secretary General of EPIC, reiterated that EPIC and IPEC, both standards organizations in the optoelectronic field, will continue to maintain an open and cooperative relationship to jointly promote the healthy and prosperous development of the industry.


Welcome address: global photonics collaboration


Frank Chang, Chairman of the IPEC Advance Research Work Group and Chief Engineer of Source Photonics, spoke about the latest progress of the co-packaged optics (CPO) solution. This solution is designed for 800G and higher-rate transmission in the future. Frank also demonstrated the application of optoelectronic technology in various fields including laser radar, laser display, and sensing, showing a broad blueprint for new applications of photoelectric sensing.

 

Key optical technology areas to explore for next 5 years


As a special type of optical fibers, multi-core fibers (MCFs) have inherent advantages and application value in some special communications fields. Prof. Takehiro from KDDI shed light on the application of space division multiplexing (SDM) and the latest research and experiment progress of MCFs. He believed that in the future, MCFs will be applied in extensive scenarios such as submarine communications for transoceanic transmission, as well as fiber to the home (FTTH).

 

Recent R&D efforts and progress of MCF technology toward practical deployment in communications


In addition to the communications field, optical fiber sensing technology has also been employed in the medical and industrial detection fields in recent years. Prof. Murayama from the University of Tokyo commented that optical fiber sensors are light and thin and feature anti-electromagnetic interference and high reliability. With the distributed sensing architecture, customers can easily obtain abundant detection data in real time. In the future, this technology can be widely used in different fields such as medical and health care, automobile sensing, and the long-term monitoring of industrial equipment. Looking forward, optical fiber sensing has huge application potentials in the consumer market.


Industrial applications and International standards of fiber optic sensors


Finally, Prof. Martin Schell from the HHI presented the latest research progress of photonic integrated circuits (PICs) in the optical communications and sensing fields. He believes that PICs' advantages are their simple architecture and low power consumption for upcoming high-baud-rate communications scenarios, as well as their wide development potential in lidar, optical computing, and quantum communications fields.


Photonic integration for communication and sensing


The IPEC Seminar of the Global Optoelectronic Industry created a communication channel for technical experts. At the seminar, the latest technical research progress and industry development trends in the optoelectronic communications field were shared. The seminar also provided an outlook on the application fields of emerging optoelectronic technologies, establishing an open and broad platform for the continuous prosperity of the global optoelectronic industry. We sincerely hope that more companies and experts join IPEC to jointly promote the continuous and healthy development of the industry.