FRE­DER­IC - FouR­i­Er Do­main Elec­tRIc­al-to-op­tic­al Con­vert­er

The aim of this project is to prove the functionality of a novel digital electronics-to-photonics transmitter concept exploiting the features of the well-established Fourier transform. The novelty of our approach compared to state-of-the-art architectures is that the optical data stream is not directly transferred from the electronic to the optic world but the optical spectrum is reconstructed by individual spectral elements representing each a complex Fourier-coefficient of the coherent broadband data stream. The advantage of this approach, which has already been successfully demonstrated for energy-efficient digital-to-analogue converters (DACs), is that the necessary bandwidth per electro-optic conversion is orders of magnitude below today’s bandwidth requirements. In addition, the required digital signal processing to calculate the Fourier coefficients is not only very efficient but also runs at a reduced speed. In this way, it is possible to implement a high-performance optical transmitter with cost-effective commercial components. A full integration of the system will lead to new performance records in terms of data rates, power consumption, and system costs. The expertise of the two applicants will be combined in order to design, build and test such a system and demonstrate its capabilities and its scalability.