Next Generation Transceivers

Technology Work Group

Chairs

Dominic O'Brien, University of Oxford
Michael Schabel, Bell Laboratories, Lucent Technologies

Participants: MIT and Industry Consortium Member Companies

Participants: Other Companies

Summary

Optical technologies have grown in importance for communication applications—as continued innovations allow for a cost-effective means of transmitting large amounts of data over long distances—compared to electrical transmission over wires. Today's optical transceiver, which co-packages a transmission laser and a photonic receiver, represents the market's need for integration, physical design, performance, and cost efficiency. Going forward, the demand to transmit data will continue to grow; this creates new market opportunities, but also requires that optical transceivers evolve to address those markets.

The challenge to satisfy next generation applications is compounded by current challenges, which include a proliferation of standards, a large diversity in global requirements, little design convergence across various optical component applications, and challenging market conditions. There are other significant, but distinct, challenges in each sector of optical communications; Microphotonics: Hardware for the Information Age aims to identify these, as well as potential solutions.

The 'Holy Grail' for next generation optical transceivers is to address the disparate needs that presently exist over a wide range of applications with a single converged solution. Convergence may arise in a variety of ways, be it through standards, market requirements, component performance, packaging design, and/or manufacturing methodologies. Such a convergence offers the advantage of a larger potential market for any one component or technology, but requires that this gain outweigh the cost of the 'over-engineering' that will necessarily exist for some of the applications.

It is extremely difficult to predict the future demand for—technical development of—transceivers. New applications may offer opportunities to organics and other materials systems, but the challenges to the "traditional" transceiver industry are ones of very low cost manufacturing.

It seems likely that in higher performance applications, electronic processing will become an integral part of the NGT, increasing levels of optoelectronic integration will be used, and adaptive transceivers may be enabled by these two factors. In data communications there are significant challenges to be overcome and a number of potential futures.