Ultrafast all-optical technologies for bidirectional optical wireless communications

Abstract

In this Letter, a spherical retro-modulator architecture is introduced for operation as a bidirectional transceiver in passive optical wireless communication links. The architecture uses spherical retroreflection to enable retroreflection with broad directionality (2π steradians), and it uses all-optical beam interaction to enable modulation on ultrafast timescales (120 fs duration). The spherical retro-modulator is investigated from a theoretical standpoint and is fabricated for testing with three glasses, N-BK7, N-LASF9, and S-LAH79. It is found that the S-LAH79 structure provides the optimal refraction and nonlinearity for the desired retroreflection and modulation capabilities.

Ultrafast all-optical switching with photonic nanojets and semiconductor nanoparticles

“…Future applications may include cascaded implementations accomplished by daisy-chained spheres [29] , which is challenging for the majority of AOS devices [30] . The omnidirectionality offered by the sphere, allowing for multiple inputs/outputs, could be used to implement parallel implementations [31] , or free-space communication systems [32] . With the potential of these future applications, the proposed AOS architecture is well-suited for integration with terabit-persecond fibre optic systems.…”