The growing role of biosensors

Part 2: Professor Laura Lechuga, biosensor pioneer 

Professor Lechuga, a leading biosensor researcher, explains the challenges involved in developing medical biosensors and why, due to covid, the technology's time has come.  

Professor LechugaLaura Lechuga is a multideciplinarian. She read chemistry at university, did a doctorate in physics while her postdoctoral research was in electrical engineering. She has even worked in a cleanroom, making chips.

Group leader at the NanoBiosensors and Bioanalytical Applications Group at the Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (ICN2), Lechuga thus has an ideal background for biosensor research.

Biosensors are used for health, environmental, food control, veterinary and agriculture applications. They are used to test for chemical substances and comprise a biological element and an optical sensor.

Her initial focus was environmental biosensors but she quickly switched to medical devices, partly because of the great interest healthcare generates.

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Access 4.0: A valuable lesson in network transformation

The Access 4.0 broadband deployment by Deutsche Telekom has deepened its understanding of the intricacies of network transformation. The Access 4.0 team discusses what it has learnt and reflects on the issues a mass deployment raises.

Deutsche Telekom’s Access 4.0 platform has been delivering broadband services for nearly half a year.

But the operator has deliberately limited the deployment of the next-generation fibre-to-the-x platform to one central office in Stuttgart.

Robert SoukupThe system is fully functional, says Robert Soukup, senior program manager at Deutsche Telekom, but the operator wants to understand the processes involved so they can be automated before it starts the widescale deployment.

“Now we can see where the gaps are and what we need to adapt internally,” says Hans-Jörg Kolbe, chief engineer and head of SuperSquad Access 4.0 at Deutsche Telekom.

This will take the rest of the year. Only if this final check is successful will the Access 4.0 platform be rolled out across the operator’s 1,000 central offices in Germany.

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Broadcom discusses its co-packaged optics plans

If electrical interfaces are becoming an impediment, is co-packaged optics the answer? Broadcom certainly thinks so.

One reason for the growing interest in co-packaged optics is the input-output (I/O) demands of switch chips. If the packet processing capacity of such chips is doubling every two years, their I/O must double too.

Alexis BjörlinRepeatedly doubling the data throughput of a switch chip is a challenge.

Each new generation of switch chip must either double the number of serialiser-deserialiser (serdes) circuits or double their speed.

A higher serdes count - the latest 25.6-terabit switch ICs have 256, 100 gigabit-per-second serdes - requires more silicon area while both approaches - a higher count and higher speed - increase the chip's power consumption.

Faster electrical interfaces also complicate the system design since moving the data between the chip and the optical modules on the switch's front panel becomes more challenging.

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COBO adds co-packaged optics to its agenda

The Consortium of On-Board Optics (COBO) is progressing with its work to create specifications for co-packaged optics.

The decision to address co-packaged optics by an organisation established to promote on-board optics reflects the significant industry interest co-packaged optics has gained in the last year.

So says Brad Booth, director, leading edge architecture pathfinding team in Azure hardware systems and infrastructure at Microsoft.

Source: COBO

The COBO work also complements that of the OIF which has set up its own co-packaged optics framework. 

“We have a different collection of members [to the OIF],” says Booth. “Our members are very strong on optical connectivity and materials whereas the OIF is known for its electrical interface work and module activities like 400ZR.”

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Timepieces that tell you how you are

Apple is Rockley Photonics’ largest customer. So says Rockley in a document filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) as it prepares to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).

The Form S-4 document provides details of Rockley’s silicon photonics platform for consumer ‘wearables’ and medical devices, part of the emerging health and wellness market.

Andrew Rickman, Rockley Photonics’s CEO, discusses what the company has been working on and how a wearable device can determine a user’s health.

The first of several articles on silicon photonics-based biosensors for medical and other applications.

Andrew Rickman

Part 1: Consumer Wearables

Ever wondered what the shining green light is doing on the underside of your smartwatch?

The green LED probes the skin to measure various health parameters - biomarkers - of the wearer. Just what light can reveal about a user’s health is a topic that has preoccupied Rockley Photonics for several years.

Rockley is not solely interested in using the visible spectrum to probe the skin but also light at higher wavelengths. Using the infrared portion of the spectrum promises to reveal more about the watch wearer's health.

Rockley can also shed light on its own healthcare activities following the announcement of its merger with SC Health that will enable Rockley to be listed on the NYSE, valued at $1.2 billion.

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OIF addresses 800-gigabit coherent interfaces

The OIF has started work on 800-gigabit coherent interfaces, a follow-on to its 400-gigabit 400ZR specification work.

Two requirements are being addressed: an 800-gigabit dense wavelength division (DWDM) interface with a 80-120km span for data centre interconnect, and an unamplified single-channel fixed-wavelength 2-10km coherent link for campuses.

The need for 800 gigabit

Tad Hofmeister

“When we hit that 90 per cent mark on 400ZR, we had people stand up and say: ‘We are ready to start 800ZR’,” says Karl Gass, OIF, physical link layer working group – optical vice-chair.

But completing the work has taken time. “The first 90 per cent of a project takes about half the time and the last 10 per cent takes the other half,” says Gass.

So only in mid-2020 did the OIF’s attention turn to the new standard, starting with determining the use cases.

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DT chooses Nokia for a major optical network upgrade

Deutsche Telekom is redesigning its domestic optical network and has chosen Nokia as its equipment supplier.

“They are re-architecting and rolling out, in a short time, a huge portion of their optical network,” says Kyle Hollasch, (pictured) director of optical portfolio marketing, Nokia. “We are displacing in many parts of the network four different vendors.”

Network architecture

Deutsche Telekom’s legacy mesh-based wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) network uses equipment from several vendors. In the last decade, Deutsche Telekom also added to the core an IP-optical solution from Cisco Systems.

Now, the CSP is replacing the mesh-WDM network and the Cisco IP-optical core with an OTN-WDM core from Nokia.

“They are unifying their traffic from all of their business services, government services, 5G anyhaul and the core IP network onto one core WDM network,” says Hollasch. 

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