ANALYSIS PHOTONIC INTEGRATED CIRCUITS
Challenges when doing business with photonic integration
Although photonic integrated circuits are now used commercially, there are still issues when fabricating photonic chips. Iñigo Artundo, CEO of VLC Photonics and a speaker at September’s Photonic Integration Conference in The Netherlands, outlines the business considerations that come with photonic integration
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et’s face it, while photonic integration has progressed a lot in the last decade, the technology is still running 30 years behind electronics,
and many areas still require a higher level of development and maturity. Of course, evolution also needs to come from a business perspective. Optical component and system markets naturally progress towards lower costs and higher functionalities and performances. But they also need time until the right ecosystem of customers and providers is in place, and profitable business and higher volumes are created for small start-ups and large corporations alike.
The situation now is that, while the right capabilities are available for the right price from many providers, there are still many
challenges that any end-user needs to deal with when facing a photonic integration project.
Conceptual challenges
The first challenge is to understand photonic integration technology itself, including its current capabilities and limitations. In order to exploit fully all of the advantages that photonic integrated circuits (PICs) can offer, the mindset of optical engineers needs to adapt to this new paradigm, in a similar way to what happened within electronic integration. The complexity of potential optical systems, together with the lower cost when scaling to high volumes and the drastic miniaturisation possible, opens the door to many applications and implementations that were just inconceivable before.
Packaged assembly of InP and TriPleX photonic
integrated circuits 14 ELECTRO OPTICS l OCTOBER 2016
However, sometimes this is hard for some novices in the field to grasp, and there are still many things to understand before jumping straight into designing a PIC. Things like intellectual property (IP) restrictions, differences among providers in the supply chain, scalability when moving from prototype to pilot production or even mass manufacturing, can prove to be critical factors, and can represent the difference between success and failure of a project. A knowledgeable partner in the field can help face all these initial questions. Moreover, communication between the photonic integration field and potential end customers can sometimes be difficult. While the largest market for PICs has traditionally
been telecom, and the background for such applications is well understood here, this is not as true when dealing with other photonic integration markets, like sensing, quantum or medical optics, where the technical background and language of customers can be very different. Such communication is paramount to understanding the customer’s needs along the value chain – again, having a partner that understands and translates both sides can be very valuable.
Design challenges One
of the most underestimated challenges is testing
On the design side, things like IP of design building blocks or fabrication processes can be very important for a customer to know beforehand. More automated and standardised software design tools are still required, and customers would benefit from common frameworks for design – from mode solving, to mode propagation, circuit simulation and layout – especially given the low compatibility among software tools and high licensing price. The PDAFlow Foundation, an organisation developing software standards for photonic design automation, along with rental software licenses and design houses, are helping in this respect. This, in some ways, is
to be expected, as skilled workforce in the design field is still low, sometimes thanks to poor software documentation. Design is an area with a steep learning curve, but significant effort is being made – particuarly wiith training schemes in Europe – and design houses can help customers get up to speed with low risk.
@electrooptics |
www.electrooptics.com
VLC Photonics
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