Synchronization is a vital and wide-spread functionality in telecommunication transport systems and networks. In order to overcome current limitations this program investigates new optical synchronization mechanisms that offer significant advantages compared to current technology in terms of cost, flexibility, performance, footprint, and power consumption. This research consists of three major tasks that are highly connected: (a) a new multi-wavelength multi-data-rate optical clock recovery concept which utilizes narrow-band optical filtering to substitute single channel single-data-rate electrical circuits by optical devices and pushes parallel handling of optical channels beyond transmission along network edges towards processing at the network nodes; (b) a new multi-wavelength multi-data-rate pulse reshaping concept as part of optical regeneration which combines the clock recovery concept from (a) with nonlinear pulse compression; and (c) a new self synchronization concept for optical time division add-drop-multiplexers that utilizes a nonlinear mechanism in order to ease very tight timing tolerances when a lower-speed tributary channel has to be added to the higher-speed through traffic, especially since they originate from independent sources without temporal correlation. This proposed project will make significant scientific contributions to telecommunication systems and it will demonstrate how new devices built on well known physical effects will perform important operations in future telecommunication infrastructure with higher degrees of functionality performed in the optical domain.
Broad Impacts Participating graduate and undergraduate students, and the graduate course on "Photonic Telecommunication Systems and Components" will benefit from this project resulting in a contribution to a broader and better-educated workforce. Workshops for local state high-school teachers as well as for a knowledge transfer program with a regional Native Americans community college offer the opportunity to broaden the understanding of photonics, telecommunications, and the internet, and its importance for economy and society.
