April 2025
UNICO Team at OFC 2025
UNICO work package leaders Vera Bakshaeva and Janina Rautert from Innolume, Johana Bernasconi from Enlightra, and Liam Barry from DCU met at the OFC 2025 exhibition in San Francisco to share their latest developments and watch live comb laser demonstrations at the Innolume and Enlightra booths. In addition to their 16-wavelength O- and C-band combs, Enlightra presented their vision for the future of DWDM optical interconnects and introduced new products reaching 64 wavelengths. Innolume demonstrated a new O-band comb laser with 24 wavelengths spaced at 100 GHz for CW-WDM data transmission, which was also featured in an OFC postdeadline paper presentation.
April 2025
Innolume's Postdeadline Paper on Ultra-Wideband QD Comb Laser (100GHz Spacing) to be presented at OFC 2025 on April 3
We are proud to announce that our postdeadline paper has been accepted for OFC 2025! This marks the third consecutive year that our work has received this prestigious recognition.
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Paper Title: Ultra-Wideband, Flat-Top, 100 GHz Spacing Quantum-Dot Comb Laser for CW-WDM Data Transmission in O-Band
Authors: Janina Rautert, Mikhail Buyalo, Vladimir Mikhrin, Artem Zhabotinskii, Alexey Gubenko (Innolume GmbH); John Simons, Prabhav Gaur (Axalume Inc.); Alexey Kovsh, Ashok Krishnamoorthy (Alfalume Inc.)
Session: Joint Postdeadline Paper Session IV (Th4D)
Date & Time: April 3, 2025 | 4:30 PM – 6:30 PM (PT)
Location: Room 207 (Level 2)
Presentation Slot: 5:00 PM – 5:15 PM
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Along with our previous postdeadline presentations at OFC 2024 “High-Power O-band QD Booster Amplifier for Uncooled Operation” (S. Poltavtsev et al.) and OFC 2023 “High-Performance O-band QD DFB Laser for Uncooled Operation” (V. Mikhrin et al.), our upcoming 2025 presentation highlights the broad portfolio of photonic devices developed by Innolume to meet the explosive bandwidth demands of AI connectivity and cloud networking. These three consecutive postdeadline recognitions underscore our leading role in advancing uncooled, high-performance QD lasers for next-generation optical interconnects.
We cordially invite you to attend the session and visit our booth (#4909) to learn more about our product portfolio.
Meet the UNICO Project at OFC 2025 – Booth #4909!
31.03.25 - 03.04.25
We are excited to announce that UNICO team members will be attending OFC 2025, taking place from 30 March – 03 April 2025, at Moscone Center, San Francisco, California, USA.
At booth #4909, where Innolume will present its latest innovations, we will showcase the first achievements of the UNICO project, including the 100 GHz comb laser demonstrator. This marks an important step in our research and development efforts, and we are eager to share our progress with industry experts, partners, and visitors.
Don’t miss the opportunity to explore the latest breakthroughs in optical communication technology and discover firsthand the innovations that UNICO and Innolume are bringing to the field!
November 2024
Paper accepted in IEEE PHOTONICS TECHNOLOGY LETTERS
The UNICO team is happy to announce the publication of the paper “2×53 Gbit/s PAM-4 Transmission Using 1.3 μm DML with High Power Budget Enabled by Quantum-Dot SOA” in IEEE Photonics Technology Letters, DOI 10.1109/LPT.2024.3504841. The massive growth in the digital economy continues to require the development of new technologies to increase data rates, while reducing the energy consumption of the optical communication systems that form the backbone of the internet. This collaborative work between industry and academic partners in Ireland and Germany demonstrates that by combining a high speed directly modulated laser which has excellent efficiency, with an efficient quantum dot semiconductor optical amplifier, we can develop high capacity and energy efficient data transmission systems. Specifically the use of a directly modulated laser instead of external modulation greatly reduces the system loss, and the ability to amplify a multiwavelength signal with a single SOA minimises energy consumption per bit while ensuring the ability to operate the transmission link over significant distances.
October 2024
Paper accepted in JOURNAL OF LIGHTWAVE TECHNOLOGY
The UNICO team is happy to announce the publication of the paper “Bit Error Rate in WDM Data Transmission Links with Semiconductor Optical Amplifier” in JOURNAL OF LIGHTWAVE TECHNOLOGY DOI 10.1109/JLT.2024.3475885, which marks a milestone in understanding the possibilities and limitations of semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs) in data transmission.
Silicon modulators in optical data transceivers suffer from high optical losses. An efficient way to compensate these losses is to use a semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) after the modulation. However, this approach is known to increase the bit error rate (BER), especially in case of multiple optical channels (WDM). As the UNICO project aims to develop multi-channel (Comb) laser sources integrated to silicon on insulator (SOI) and amplified by SOAs, one of our major challenges is to identify and quantify the underlying effects within the SOA causing high BER.
The article shows not only that the distortions mainly originate from cross-/self-gain modulation and beat noise but also determines a wide range of SOA applicability in WDM data transmission for different data rates and modulation formats based on the device characteristics. Simple rules can be extracted and applied to design suitable optical amplifiers for any use case. The UNICO team will utilize these results to optimize the SOA which will increase efficiency of the whole optical engine.
UNICO Team at ECOC 2024
23.09.24 - 26.09.24
UNICO Team members from Innolume and Enlightra meeting at the ECOC 2024 in Frankfurt to inform visitors about the Universal Frequency-Comb Platform and to presented the latest developments on the UNICO key components: Comb lasers, PICs and the WDM SOA.
UNICO Project debuted at OFC 2024
26.03.24 - 28.03.24
UNICO Project at OFC 2024
26.03.24 - 28.03.24
The UNICO Project will be presented at the upcoming Optical Networking and Communication Conference & Exhibition (OFC) 2024 in San Diego!
At booth #5251, where Innolume will be showcasing its latest innovations, UNICO team members look forward to providing you with deeper insights into the scope of the project.
Join us at OFC 2024 to discover the cutting-edge advancements in optical communication technology and have a firsthand look at what UNICO and Innolume have to offer!
Kick-off meeting
07.11.23 - 08.11.23
On the left: DCU: Liam Barry, Ahmed Galib Reza; Innolume: Sven Rüger, Alexey Gubenko; Enlightra: Johana Bernasconi
In the centre: Innolume: Janina Rautert, Vera Bakshaeva, Vladimir Mikhrin, Konstantin Morozov, Mikhail Buyalo; DCU: Marcos Troncoso Costas; Enlightra: Irina Kulkova
On the right: Innolume: Sergey Mikhrin; Enlightra: Maxim Karpov; DCU: Lakshmi Narayanan Venkatasubramani
From 7 to 8 November 2023, UNICO partners held a kick-off meeting at Innolume in Dortmund, Germany. The partners discussed detailed technical goals of the project, reviewed timelines and important milestones, as well as goals for the first half of the project. Then was a laboratory and cleanroom tour for Innolume's guests.