Silicon based integrated photonic chip technology for datacenter optical interconnection

Abstract

With the rise of the modern Internet of Things, big data and other industries, the human society’s demand for information increases rapidly, and the demand for broadband network capacity shows a dramatic growth trend. As its core support, optical communication system and data center are facing major challenges. With the characteristics of small volume, light weight and low power consumption, optoelectronic integrated devices are the key devices to break through the bottleneck of optical communication system and data center optical interconnection. In this paper, silicon-based integrated optical switching technology and multiplexing technology applied for datacenter optical interconnection are studied. The implementation methods and technical bottlenecks of silicon-based integrated optical switching chips and mode multiplexing/demultipelxing chips are discussed. Moreover, the future of silicon-based integrated photonic technology is prospected.