Research Projects

Optical Fiber Transmission Systems Enabling Longitudinal Monitoring and Data Center Interconnects for Tomorrows Internet (with Ciena, Ottawa, California)

The Internet is considered an essential and critical infrastructure akin to electricity and water. Demands of Canadians for increased Internet performance include: (i) video streaming services (e.g., Netflix, YouTube), (ii) cloud-based storage and services (e.g., Dropbox, Software as a Service), iii) remote working and video conferencing (e.g., Zoom, Teams), and (iv) artificial intelligent applications (e.g., machine learning, ChatGPT, 6G wireless). These and other Internet centric applications and technologies continue to transform how Canadians interact with each other, with data, and with their surroundings. The research represents a strategic collaboration between D. Plant/McGill University and Ciena that is directed at key challenges in optical fiber transmission systems. These challenges are to i) to increase the functionality of systems operating over metro, regional, and long-haul distances (100 km, 500 km, and 1000+ km, respectively), and ii) Data Center Interconnect distances ranging from 0.5 to 10 KM. Key objectives of the proposed research include designing and demonstrating i) longitudinal monitoring digital signal processing algorithms to be utilized in coherent optical fiber transmission systems, and ii) identifying Data Center Interconnect transceiver architectures and attendant digital signal processing algorithms for both coherent and direct detection optical fiber transmission systems. The proposed research involves design, analysis, simulation, and experimentation, and intersects the fields of optics, optoelectronics, electronics, and digital signal processing.

Optical Fiber Communications Systems for the 5G Enabled Mobile Network (with Ericsson, Montreal, Piza, Italy)

Global IP traffic continues to grow. A significant portion of this future growth will come via 5G platforms, namely smart phones and tablets. Applications driving requirements for increased capacity include (i) video streaming services, (ii) cloud based storage and services, and (iii) machine-to-machine applications. The proposed research represents a strategic collaboration between D. Plant/McGill University and Ericsson that is directed at key challenges in 5G communications, namely increasing the capacity and spectral efficiency of xHaul optical fiber communication systems. Key objectives of the proposed research include (i) maximizing the per-channel information bit rate of coherent detection base optical fiber transmission systems, and (ii) identifying new transceiver architectures and attendant Digital Signal Processors (DSPs) for direct detection based optical fiber transmission systems. The proposed research involves design, analysis, simulation and experimentation, and intersects the fields of optics, optoelectronics, electronics, and digital signal processing. It will be deliver results that are highly valuable to Canadian Information and Communications Technologies sector employers including optical component suppliers, optical networking companies, wireless networking companies, and service providers.

Silicon Photonic Transceiver Analysis, Design, and Test (with Dream Photonics, Vancouver)

Via design, simulation, fabrication through external partnerships (e.g., TSMC, ANT, Global Foundries), the project demonstrates novel transceiver designs applicable in data center interconnects.

Optical Data Ring (with General Dynamics Mission Systems, Ottawa)

Research aims to design and demonstrate a novel interconnect architecture built using side emitting fibers that are launching high data rate signals. Custom receiver architectures are built that capture date from a moving transmitter.

Data Center Interconnects – Enabling Transmission Systems and Technologies (High-Throughput and Secure Networks Challenge Grant with Fonex (Montreal) and NRC (Ottawa))

Novel silicon photonic transceivers are designed, fabricated and tested for application in Passive Optical Network (PON) application use cases. New methods to heterogenesouldy integrate II-V compound semiconductor matirels onto silicon photonic chips is being research. The goal is to build new heterogensously integrated III-V/silicon photonic trasmitters and receivers.

Développement d'un émetteur-récepteur intégré à distribution quantique variable continue (CV-QKD) en silicium-photon

This project aims to develop an integrated silicon-based CV-QKD transceiver, which can be used as a standalone component in CV-QKD experiments and products. As aforementioned, CV-QKD is compatible with the classical telecommunication infrastructure, which exhibited a wide deployment of silicon photonics transceivers. Thereby, developing a silicon photonics CV-QKD transceiver that can be integrated with the other telecommunication components on the same chip or package is of utmost importance to address security loopholes concerns and to reduce the overall costs of the system. Hence, the main objective of this project is to design, characterize, and test an integrated CV-QKD transceiver fabricated by an accessible commercial silicon photonics foundry with a standard CMOS-compatible process flow. The CV-QKD transceiver will include all the needed electro-optic components except for the laser, which can be integrated heterogeneously in the same way as current silicon telecommunication optical transceivers.