Photonic Components and Packaging Technologies for Optical Links

Dr. Torsten Wipiejewski 

Director，Huawei Technologies Duesseldorf GmbH

Abstract: 

This course will provide an overview on the various photonic components and packaging technologies that enable optical interconnects. These applications are key for the information and communication technology of today and path a way to the future. High speed optical interconnects from board level in data centers to long haul transmission systems requires photonic components with high speed and high reliability. We will discuss the main components such as laser diodes of various types including VCSELs, high speed optical modulators and photodetectors.

AI has become a major driver to increase data throughput in data centers and high-performance computing. Optical interconnects offer a large bandwidth and can help to reduce energy consumption for data transfer. Bringing the optical engine close to the GPU/ASIC core is the target of co-packaged optics (CPO) solutions replacing the electrical signal lines on board level. Packaging technologies play a key role in the implementation of optical solutions, because the cost of the system is typically dominated by the assembly and packaging cost. Integration schemes such as photonic integrated circuits (PICs) have become mainstream technologies for cost and size reduction. We will discuss optical waveguides and the coupling of optical waveguides and components to optical fibers. This is a key challenge in optical packaging because of the tight alignment tolerances.  

Lecturer Biography:

Dr. Torsten Wipiejewski joined Huawei Technologies in 2014 and is responsible for the European technology sourcing of Huawei’s Hardware Engineering Institute. His interest covers all hardware aspects for products ranging from smart watches to optical communication systems. He has also been appointed as Technical Advisor to the President of Huawei’s European Research Institute. Previously, Torsten was an investor in renewable energy, CEO at Optogan (Germany, Finland) making blue LEDs, and COO at Firecomms (Ireland) making optical transceivers for automotive applications. He also held management positions at ASTRI in Hong Kong, Agility Communications in Santa Barbara, CA, USA as well as Infineon, Osram, and Siemens in Germany. Torsten received a “summa cum laude” Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Ulm, Germany and has been an executive member of several international conferences. He was the General Chair of ECTC 2008 and has lectured several courses at conferences and universities. He holds more than 30 patents and has published over 100 scientific papers and presentations.