Skip to main content
Go to the home page of the European Commission (opens in new window)
English English
CORDIS - EU research results
CORDIS
Content archived on 2024-06-18

Colourless and Coolerless Components for low Power Optical Networks

Project description


Photonics

As the capacity demands for telecommunications continue to grow exponentially, the energy consumption of the network increases super-linearly with capacity. As a result, energy limits will constrain future growth, and this is predicted to be a significant brake on development of the global knowledge economy. The C-3PO project will develop a new generation of ‘coolerless’ and ‘colourless’ photonic components that will reduce power consumption, whilst enabling bandwidth growth and constraining cost. Taking a large modern internet data and switching centre with 5MWatt power consumption (44GWh/year) as an example, the ability of C-3PO photonic components to operate without cooling can lead to annual communications equipment and air-conditioning power savings of up to 4GWh, which will reduce energy costs by ~500k€/year for such a typical data centre. In addition, the C-3PO components will be ‘colourless’, or non-wavelength specific, which allows a single component type to operate at any wavelength in a dense wavelength division multiplexed (DWDM) system. As such, C-3PO technology can be universally applied from low-cost and reconfigurable router interfaces for metro networks down to the end-user optical modem in fibre to the home/business networks. In detail, C-3PO will develop low cost photonic-integrated multi-wavelength laser sources with high temperature-stable performance and use these as ‘optical wavelength power sources’ to seed colourless and coolerless InP-based reflective modulators driven by power-efficient SiGe BiCMOS electronics. This will remove the need for use of expensive, thermoelectrically cooled tuneable lasers, leading to projected global annual equipment savings of more than 300M€ from data and switching centre applications alone. This saving would be achieved through simplification of optical and electronic hardware, the reduction of the need for thermal management and the elimination of manufacturing costs associated with device characterisation and the generation of individual laser tuning maps. The presence of major European industrial players in the consortium will enable rapid commercialisation of the project outputs, enhancing European competitiveness in the global telecommunications market and ultimately leading to new high technology jobs for European workers.

As the capacity demands for telecommunications continue to grow exponentially, the energy consumption of the network increases super-linearly with capacity. As a result, energy limits will constrain future growth, and this is predicted to be a significant brake on development of the global knowledge economy. The C-3PO project will develop a new generation of 'coolerless' and 'colourless' photonic components that will reduce power consumption, whilst enabling bandwidth growth and constraining cost. Taking a large modern internet data and switching centre with 5MWatt power consumption (44GWh/year) as an example, the ability of C-3PO photonic components to operate without cooling can lead to annual communications equipment and air-conditioning power savings of up to 4GWh, which will reduce energy costs by ~500k€/year for such a typical data centre. In addition, the C-3PO components will be 'colourless', or non-wavelength specific, which allows a single component type to operate at any wavelength in a dense wavelength division multiplexed (DWDM) system. As such, C-3PO technology can be universally applied from low-cost and reconfigurable router interfaces for metro networks down to the end-user optical modem in fibre to the home/business networks. In detail, C-3PO will develop low cost photonic-integrated multi-wavelength laser sources with high temperature-stable performance and use these as 'optical wavelength power sources' to seed colourless and coolerless InP-based reflective modulators driven by power-efficient SiGe BiCMOS electronics. This will remove the need for use of expensive, thermoelectrically cooled tuneable lasers, leading to projected global annual equipment savings of more than 300M€ from data and switching centre applications alone. This saving would be achieved through simplification of optical and electronic hardware, the reduction of the need for thermal management and the elimination of manufacturing costs associated with device characterisation and the generation of individual laser tuning maps. The presence of major European industrial players in the consortium will enable rapid commercialisation of the project outputs, enhancing European competitiveness in the global telecommunications market and ultimately leading to new high technology jobs for European workers.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.

You need to log in or register to use this function

Programme(s)

Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.

Topic(s)

Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.

Call for proposal

Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.

FP7-ICT-2009-5
See other projects for this call

Funding Scheme

Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.

CP - Collaborative project (generic)

Coordinator

UNIVERSITY COLLEGE CORK - NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF IRELAND, CORK
EU contribution
€ 373 231,00
Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

No data

Participants (6)

My booklet 0 0