Optical Innovation

Electron microscope photo of a nanotechnology based optical circuit

Pirelli Labs Optical Innovation activities are concentrated on three main lines of research, all of which are of great importance for telecommunications:

• photonics nanotechnologies
• optical modules and systems
• devices for access networks
  

The scope of nanotechnology applied to photonic devices is to reach a high degree of miniaturisation of optical components using methodologies mutated from microelectronics.
With today's technologies, allowing the production of very high performances, but being costly and bulky devices, the use of optics in the telecommunication environment is mainly limited to very high capacity systems deployed in the long distance network.

Inner structure of an advanced optical transceivers

The use of the set of techniques, collectively called "nanotechnology," will lead to a decrease of at least one order of magnitude in the cost of photonic devices, besides reducing size and power consumption, thus making them suitable for large volume applications. This is why nanotechnology is one of the main enabling technologies for the wide dissemination of optical fibre access, based on the so called "Fibre-to-the-Home" architecture, and for the generalised dissemination of optical transmission in the networks of Small-Medium enterprises.

In this field, R&D was strongly focused on several innovative devices. The first of these products, the tuneable laser, now on the market, was included in the market portfolio of Pirelli Broadband Solutions. It's one of the first products in the world based on optical nanotechnologies - and is proof that Pirelli Labs can create innovation while being driven by market needs.

As far as optical systems are concerned, Pirelli Labs has followed a market-driven strategy. During the so called "bubble era" between 1996 and 2000, a great number of high capacity, long distance systems were deployed. Today, most of these systems are relatively underused since only a small part of their potential capacity is actually exploited to transmit information. Thus, in the area of high capacity systems, the market is saturated.

The situation is completely different for lower capacity optical systems used in the metropolitan and regional area. In fact, the number of systems deployed in these network areas during the "bubble era" was not so high. This was due to the fact that the cost of optics was very high at the time and unsuitable for the lower cost target of lower end transmission equipment.

Today the situation is completely different. On one hand, the evolution of broadband access is increasing traffic, thus creating bottlenecks in the metro and regional area; while on the other hand, Pirelli Labs technology today is particularly suited to the development of systems with a very competitive cost target.

Metro Access System

For these reasons, Pirelli Labs has developed optical equipment for "coarse" wavelength multiplexing, currently deployed in field. Furthermore, the development of a broadband optical distribution system for corporate and residential LANs is ongoing. The main feature of the new system is that it will be very easy to




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