Mode-Division-Multiplexed Photonic Router for High Performance Network-on-Chip

Abstract

The communication bandwidth and power consumption of network-on-chip (NoC) are going to meet their limits soon because of traditional metallic interconnects. Photonic NoC is emerging as a promising alternative to address these bottlenecks. Photonic routers and silicon-waveguides are used to realize switching and communication respectively. In this paper, we propose a non-blocking, low power, and high performance 5×5 photonic router design using silicon microring resonators(MRR). Mode-division-multiplexing (MDM) scheme has been incorporated along with wavelength-division-multiplexing (WDM) and time-division-multiplexing (TDM) in the router to increase the aggregate bandwidth 4× times, making it a suitable candidate for high performance NoC. The technique proposed here is the first of its kind to the best of our knowledge. The MDM based design permits multi-modal (here 2 modes) communication. As compared to a high-performance 45nm electronic router, the proposed router consumes 95% less power. Further the results show 50% less power consumption and 75% less insertion loss when compared to most recently reported photonic router results.

Hybrid Photonic-Plasmonic Nonblocking Broadband 5 × 5 Router for Optical Networks

“…MZI, MRR, and IPS stand for Mach-Zehnder interferometer, micro-ring resonator, and hybrid photonic-plasmonic switch. The projects of Li [15], Ji [7], Yaghoubi [41] and Jia [8] are results from fabricated and tested devices, while Dang [42] and this work are results based on numerical simulations.…”

DESIGN A 2x2 COMPACT MODE SWITCHING USING MULTIMODE INTERFERENCE BASED ON SILICON MATERIAL

“…In MDM technique, data channels are independently carried on orthogonal eigenmodes of the same wavelength to increase capacity of optical communications. To meet the future broadband telecom and on-chip communication application [15][16], mode switch featuring with smallfootprint, wideband, low loss, small-crosstalk operations and simple fabrication are particularly desirable to realize compact photonic integrated circuits that could work simultaneously for MDM and WDM signals.…”