Mar 26 2015
An Albuquerque, N.M.-based startup company, Dynamic Photonics, Inc., has developed an avalanche photodiode technology solution that will significantly increase the speed of fiber optics-based communications with far less distortion and much lower cost than current technologies.
The company’s Dynamic-Bias Enhanced Avalanche Photodiodes (DBE-APD) technology makes its debut this week at the OFC Technical Conference and Exposition, the largest global gathering for optical communications and networking professionals, March 24-26 in Los Angeles.
An avalanche photodiode—known as APD—is a highly sensitive semiconductor electronic device that converts light into electricity. For years, the photonics industry has struggled to meet the demands of the exponential growth in voice, data, video, and mobile device over the Internet. The trillion-dollar telecommunications industry has targeted 40Gbps and 100Gbps protocols for fast, distortion-free data transfer, but has failed to find a cost-effective commercial solution despite a now critical need.
Dynamics Photonics CEO Robert Efroymson has announced that his company has the solution: patent-pending, high-sensitivity APD fiber optics technology that has been tested and verified by a second laboratory to have the potential to successfully achieve the desired 40Gbps protocol, while reducing bit-error rate and doing so at a fraction of the cost of current high-speed optical receivers on the market.
“Our DBE-APD technology is the first dynamically biased APD for high-speed, direct-detection optical communication,” said Efroymson. “We have the unprecedented opportunity to achieve 100-Gb/s and 400-Gb/s Ethernet systems that will, at a minimum, make long-haul 40Gbps per channel links in core and metropolitan area optical networks more robust in sending high-speed, clearer signals.”
Efroymson added that in the near future Dynamic Photonics’ APD can be adopted to provide optical communication using alternate high-efficiency modulation schemes such pulse-position or pulse-width modulation. It may also achieve the “holy grail” of high-speed local area networks that provide fiber to the home using advanced photonic switches.
Dynamic Photonics’ technology was co-developed by Majeed Hayat , Ph.D., and Payman Zarkesh-ha, Ph.D., of the University of New Mexico (UNM); and Joe C. Campbell, Ph.D., University of Virginia. The company licensed two technologies developed at UNM, and has two technologies developed and owned by Dynamic Photonics.
Source: http://www.dynamic-photonics.com/