Coherent Optics Everywhere!

because we all enjoy its beauty

The Digital Age imposes an enormous challenge on telecommunication networks. Global data traffic shows a skyrocketing tendency while the growth rate in data generation and processing has started to exceed that of the transport network capacity. Optical telecommunications and, in particular, coherent optics have proven an impressive performance in high-rate, long-reach data transmission:

0
Terabits delivered every second

Proc. ECOC’17, Th.PDP.A1

0
kilometers bridged

Proc. OFC’16, Th4C.1

1000
pJ energy consumed per bit

However, the telecommunication technology as found in metro and core networks cannot be simply applied to any arbitrary network since practical deployment remains strictly cost-driven. The incremental advances in these cost-limited segments are thus not able to cope with the surging traffic demand, which calls for a disruptive rather than a graceful technological migration in these bottleneck frontiers.

This is where COYOTE kicks in and explores radically new methodologies for coherent data transmission, which are key to obtain high spectral efficiency and data rates. Coherent communications remove the performance roadblocks set by direct-modulation / direct-detection. COYOTE aims to bring coherent technology to short-reach networks by meeting the requirements for lean component technology, thus offering the credentials not only for scalable performance but also for practical deployment.