Single-chip super-efficient frequency comb transmitter

Optical frequency combs are seen by many as key components to meet data throughput demands in future communications systems, that help to address the key challenges, spectral efficiency, nonlinearity mitigation and energy efficiency. Photonic integration of frequency comb based transmitters is crucial for their deployment in real-world networks.

However, a single-chip frequency comb transmitter is still eluding integration efforts due to challenges in predicitability, flexibility and efficiency.The aim of this project is to generate a single-chip comb transmitter based on electro-optic generation of square-shaped comb spectra and novel muxless multi-channel modulation using thin-film Lithium Nibobate on insulator technology.

The combination of our innovative spectro-temporal unitary transform modulation and resonant enhancement of the microwave electro-optic modulation, allows to side-step the challenges inherent in other approaches and greatly reduce RF-power requirements and photonic integration complexity.

At the same time, due to the lossless nature of the process, optical-signal-to-noise-ratio, which is a key limiting factor, can be maximised, which will allow us to outperform current state-of-the-art devices based on discrete bulk components.