SBIR Phase I: Highly Nonlinear Total Internal Reflection (HINTIR) Fiber for All-Optical Wavelength Conversion

This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project aims to produce a highly nonlinear hgh-index-contrast total internal reflection fiber (HINTIR Fiber) for all-optical signal processing. The projected nonlinear response of this fiber is five orders of magnitude greater than that of a typical silica fiber. Because of this extraordinary enhancement of non-linearity, these HINTIR Fibers will be superior for most nonlinear applications at 1.55 micron. The main engineering challenge in manufacturing HINTIR Fibers is finding highly nonlinear materials with highly dissimilar optical properties (i.e. very different indices of refraction) and very similar thermo-mechanical properties, which are necessary for co-drawing these materials in a single fiber. HINTIR Fibers could be an enabling technology for a large class of all-optical devices, including wavelength conversion, all-optical logic, all-optical pulse reshaping and regeneration, etc. This project will focus on the application of these fibers for wavelength conversion. The optical networking equipment was a $12B market in 2002. Line cards account for roughly 50% of this market. They perform wavelength conversion by converting the signal from the optical to the electrical domain and back at a different wavelength (OEO conversion) and signal regeneration by processing the signal in the electrical domain. This requires expensive high-speed electronic and opto-electronic devices operating at the line rate of the network. If deployed in the context of an all-optical network, the proposed technology could dramatically reduce the need for OEO conversions, thus opening up a $6B market. While the adoption of all-optical networks has not happened yet, it is expected to take place in a few years by both the equipment vendors and the network operators, when current network capacity is used up. This transition will open up a large market