There are increasing requirements for data center interconnection (DCI) services, which use fiber to connect any DC distributed in a metro area and quickly establish high-capacity optical paths between cloud services and mobile edge computing and the users. In such networks, coherent transceivers with various optical frequency ranges, modulators, and modulation formats installed at each connection point must be used to meet service requirements such as fast-varying traffic requests between user computing resources. This requires technology and architectures that enable users and DCI operators to cooperate to achieve fast provisioning of WDM links and flexible route switching in a short time, independent of the transceiver’s implementation and characteristics. We propose an approach to estimate the end-to-end (EtE) generalized signal-to-noise ratio (GSNR) accurately in a short time, not by measuring the GSNR at the operational route and wavelength for the EtE optical path but by simply applying a quality of transmission probe channel link by link, at a wavelength/modulation-format convenient for measurement. Assuming connections between transceivers of various frequency ranges, modulators, and modulation formats, we propose a device software architecture in which the DCI operator optimizes the transmission mode between user transceivers with high accuracy using only common parameters such as the bit error rate. In this paper, we first implement software libraries for fast WDM provisioning and experimentally build different routes to verify the accuracy of this approach. For the operational EtE GSNR measurements, the accuracy estimated from the sum of the measurements for each link was 0.6 dB, and the wavelength-dependent error was about 0.2 dB. Then, using field fibers deployed in the NSF COSMOS testbed, a Linux-based transmission device software architecture, and transceivers with different optical frequency ranges, modulators, and modulation formats, the fast WDM provisioning of an optical path was completed within 6 min.
more »
« less
All oxide plasmon-assisted optical modulator
Data usage across the internet is growing exponentially, fueled primarily by the move to cloud computing and penetration of streaming services into developing countries. To address the growing energy needs of data centers, we propose an all oxide plasmon assisted electro-optic modulator, which features enhanced light-matter interaction, and compact sizes as seen in plasmonic modulators while at the same time maintaining low insertion losses, as seen in photonic modulators. This is achieved by utilizing a device design that selectively engages and disengages the lossy plasmonic component, as the device switches from low transmission to high transmission modes.
more »
« less
- Award ID(s):
- 1808928
- PAR ID:
- 10507320
- Editor(s):
- Subramania, Ganapathi S.; Foteinopoulou, Stavroula
- Publisher / Repository:
- SPIE
- Date Published:
- ISBN:
- 9781510637283
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 61
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Location:
- Online Only, United States
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
Abstract Devices designed to dynamically control the transmission, reflection, and absorption of terahertz (THz) radiation are essential for the development of a broad range of THz technologies. A viable approach utilizes materials which undergo an insulator‐to‐metal transition (IMT), switching from transmissive to reflective upon becoming metallic. However, for many applications, it is undesirable to have spurious reflections that can scatter incident light and induce noise to the system. We present an electrically actuated, broadband THz switch which transitions from a transparent state with low reflectivity, to an absorptive state for which both the reflectivity and transmission are strongly suppressed. Our device consists of a patterned high‐resistivity silicon metamaterial layer that provides broadband reflection suppression by matching the impedance of free space. This is integrated with a VO2ground plane, which undergoes an IMT by means of a DC bias applied to an interdigitated electrode. THz time domain spectroscopy measurements reveal an active bandwidth of 700 GHz with suppressed reflection and more than 90% transmission amplitude modulation with a low insertion loss. We utilize finite‐difference time domain (FDTD) simulations in order to examine the loss mechanisms of the device, as well as the sensitivity to polarization and incident angle. This device validates a general approach toward suppressing unwanted reflections in THz modulators and switches which can be easily adapted to a broad array of applications through straightforward modifications of the structural parameters.more » « less
-
Abstract Metasurfaces have drawn considerable attentions for their revolutionary capability of tailoring the amplitude, phase, and polarization of light. By integrating the nonlinear optical processes into metasurfaces, new wavelengths are introduced as an extra degree of freedom for further advancing the device performance. However, most of the existing nonlinear plasmonic metasurfaces are based on metallic nanoantennas as meta‐atoms, suffering from strong background transmission, low laser damage threshold and small nonlinear conversion efficiency. Here, Babinet‐inverted plasmonic metasurfaces made of C‐shaped nanoapertures as meta‐atoms are designed and demonstrated to solve these issues. Rotation‐gradient nonlinear metasurfaces are further constructed for producing spin‐selective second‐harmonic vortex beams with the orbital angular momentum (OAM) and beam diffraction angle determined by both the spin states of the fundamental wave and second‐harmonic emission. The results enable new types of functional metasurface chips for applications in spin, OAM, and wavelength multiplexed optical trapping, all‐optical communication, and optical data storage.more » « less
-
Advances in mid-IR lasers, detectors, and nanofabrication technology have enabled new device architectures to implement on-chip sensing applications. In particular, direct integration of plasmonic resonators with a dielectric waveguide can generate an ultra-compact device architecture for biochemical sensing via surface-enhanced infrared absorption (SEIRA) spectroscopy. A theoretical investigation of such a hybrid architecture is imperative for its optimization. In this work, we investigate the coupling mechanism between a plasmonic resonator array and a waveguide using temporal coupled-mode theory and numerical simulation. The results conclude that the waveguide transmission extinction ratio reaches maxima when the resonator-waveguide coupling rate is maximal. Moreover, after introducing a model analyte in the form of an oscillator coupled with the plasmonics-waveguide system, the transmission curve with analyte absorption can be fitted successfully. We conclude that the extracted sensing signal can be maximized when analyte absorption frequency is the same as the transmission minima, which is different from the plasmonic resonance frequency. This conclusion is in contrast to the dielectric resonator scenario and provides an important guideline for design optimization and sensitivity improvement of future devices.more » « less
-
A plasmonic-enhanced floating electrode optoelectronic tweezers (FEOET) device is presented for effective optical droplet manipulation. Due to the importance of having a high-quality photoconductive layer, conventional FEOET devices face the issue between ineffective DEP performance and cost-ineffective fabrication. In this study, the use of metallic nanoparticles enables plasmonic light scattering to significantly enhance light absorption onto a photoconductive layer of the device, resulting in a largely improved dielectrophoretic (DEP) performance. Two numerical simulation studies have demonstrated the working principle of plasmonic-enhanced DEP and were further validated experimentally by an improved spectrophotometric light absorbance of the TiOPc layer, as well as demonstrating an 11-fold increase in light-actuated droplet speed. With much-improved DEP performance, this plasmonic-enhanced FEOET technology can provide a low-cost solution for various digital microfluidic (DMF) applications with the benefits of device simplicity.more » « less
An official website of the United States government
