WESORAM

Steadily increasing data rates in optical networks are reaching the limits of the capacity of an optical fiber. Commissioning a parallel optical fiber while doubling all optical subsystems such as terminals, amplification and interconnection, also doubles power consumption and costs. Therefore, further exponential growth in data traffic leads to a commercially unsustainable increase in cost and power consumption. The move to optical space division multiplexing therefore requires integration of all “space channels” in a single optical subsystem to limit the growth of cost and power consumption.

The aim of WESORAM is to develop a LCOS-based 8×16 Wavelength Selective Switch (WSS) for the C-band (1530-1565nm), able to perform the switching of any of the 8 Single Mode (SM) fibre inputs or cores of a multi-core fibre into any of the 16 SM fibre output, with a wavelength granularity of 12.5GHz.

HOLOEYE tasks in the project

For the WESORAM project, HOLEYE is developing a LCOS SLM module especially optimized for working around the C-Band (1400nm-1700nm). This module is composed of two quadratic 2048×2048 pixel LCOS cells (with a pixel pitch of 6.4µm), each cell being used for managing a polarization involved in the WSS. This dual-LCOS is driven by a single high-speed electronics.

This modular system opens the possibiliy for scaling-up Spatial Light Modulators (SLM) using NxM LCOS modules.