Field Programmable Photonic Gate Arrays: principles and applications

Jose Capmany - Universitat Politecnica de Valencia

Field Programmable Photonic Gate Arrays: principles and applications

Programmable Integrated Photonics (PIP) is a new paradigm in integrated optics which seeks to provide versatile and flexible circuits, systems and subsystems adaptable to a myriad of applications. In a way PIP follows a similar itinerary as that of integrated electronics 4 decades ago but with substantial differences. In this talk, after a brief introduction to PIP, I will focus on the Field Programmable Photonic Gate Array (FPPGA) device, where a common hardware becomes multifunctional by suitable software programming. I will discuss the different hardware and software tiers involved in its development and will also provide experimental results obtained both within our research group as well as in our spinoff company. Finally, I will develop some application cases (including RF-Photonics) for the device and discuss possible future evolution paths.