Expected final results are a decision to proceed with development of the product, subject to feedback from the prototype devices.
Impact on the company, Eblana Photonics
- This fits into Eblana’s telecommunications portfolio by extending the company range into higher end (longer distance and higher speed) products.
- To continue this work there is a requirement to increase the workforce and broaden skill set. The business plan set out for 10 additional staff over 4 years with additional expertise in high speed testing, applications engineering and electronic integration required.
- Advantage was taken of the Action 9 of the Horizon 2020 Work Programme for Innovation in SMEs 2014-2015, aimed at assessing the investment potential of the most promising SMEs emerging from Phase 1 and 2 of the SME Instrument. The time spent with the expert was quite constructive for the Eblana management team from the perspective of the expert’s views on H2020, possible options for future investment, where mentoring might advantageously be used and suggestions on how to structure the team for growth.
- The mentoring innovation workshop provided by Enterprise Ireland/Enterprise Europe Network was used as part of the program and which gave positive feedback to the employees regarding the company’s proactiveness on managing innovation.
Societal Impacts
- The proposed product addresses requirements for metro-region communications (80km-800km range) supporting the proliferation of datacentres that enable cloud computing.
- The proposed product can support very high data rates over long distances at very low energy consumption levels and small size and so is a high potential solution for the current and next generation of miniaturised coherent data transmission modules.
- Additional local employment (10 positions required to be filled)
- Skills and facilities for production and packaging are available in Europe, although specific improvements in capability are likely to be required. These are in the development/production plan.
- Other than the conventional optical fibre telecommunications market, the OIL modulator should have advantages in other markets such as microwave photonics, pulsed lasers and free space optical communications because of its unique capability of carrier control and modulation linearity. As already demonstrated by us with a 51Gbps demonstration at 2µm wavelengths there is a large degree of flexibility regarding wavelength.
- The market impact is expected to be disruptive as a fully linear IQ modulator is not available.
