SiDx's use of silicon photonics for blood testing

Part 4: Biosensor start-up, SiDx

A blood sample reveals much about a person’s health. But analysing the sample is complicated given its many constituents.

Identifying a user’s blood type is also non-trivial.

If a patient arriving at hospital needs a blood transfusion, the universal donor blood type, O negative, is administered. That’s because it takes too long - 45 minutes typically - to identify the patient’s blood type. This also explains the huge demand for O negative blood.

A laser lights the waveguide causing the ring to resonate. The blood sample then flows over the ring causing constituents to bind to the receptors. A rinse stage then removes specific bound components leaving the target constituent that has a signature wavelength shift. Source: SiDx.

Identifying blood type promptly is what start-up SiDx set out to address with a platform based on a silicon photonics sensor. The resulting platform does more than just blood-type identification.

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imec’s research work to advance biosensors

Part 3: Biosensor developments

• Pol Van Dorpe discusses the institute’s use of photonics and silicon to develop new designs for medical diagnostics.
• imec has designed a breathalyser that detects the coronavirus with the accuracy of a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test, a claimed world first.

Pol Van Dorpe, an imec Fellow

Optics and photonics are advancing medical diagnostics in two notable ways.

The technologies are helping to shrink diagnostic systems to create new types of medical devices.

"Going from big lab equipment to something much smaller is a clear trend," says Pol Van Dorpe, a Fellow at imec, the Belgium R&D nanoelectronics and nanotechnology institute.

Photonics and silicon also benefit central labs by creating more powerful test instruments. More functionality and detectors can be integrated in a given area enabling multiple tests in parallel, a technique dubbed multiplexing.

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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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Silicon photonics' second wave

• “I believe the field of silicon photonics is at a pivotal point of change and acceleration.” 

• Professor Roel Baets, the winner of the 2020 John Tyndall Award, talks about what motivates his research and his interests.

Two concentric circles drawn in chalk are shown on-screen. So Professor Roel Baets open his plenary talk at the European Conference on Integrated Optics (ECIO) 2020, asking the online audience what is being shown.

Professor Roel Baets

Suggestions come flooding in: the cross-section of an optical fibre, a silicon wafer, a ring resonator optical component and - the correct answer - a doughnut.

The image is from the front cover of Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist by Kate Raworth, a UK professor of economics.

The author discusses how continual economic growth is out of kilter with the planet’s well-being and details alternative approaches. The “doughnut” represents a sweet-spot region ensuring sustainable growth.

Baets applied the book’s thinking to his plenary talk on the topic of silicon photonics research.

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Silicon Photonics spills over into new markets

Part 1: Yole market analysis

The market for silicon photonics is set to grow eightfold by 2025.

So claims market research firm, Yole Développement, in its latest report on silicon photonics, a technology that enables optical components to be made on a silicon substrate.

Silicon photonics is also being used in new markets although optical transceivers will still account for the bulk of the revenues in 2025.

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Windstream to add ICE6 as it stirs its optical network

• Windstream has used Infinera’s latest optical equipment to send an 800-gigabit signal over 730km.

• The operator wants to reduce the cost of sending bits and slash the time taken to fulfil wholesale orders.

Windstream has sent an 800-gigabit optical signal between the US cities of Phoenix and San Diego.

The operator used Infinera’s Groove modular chassis fitted with its latest ICE6 infinite capacity engine for the trial.

Infinera reported in March sending an 800-gigabit signal 950km with another operator but this is the first time a customer, Windstream, is openly discussing a trial and the technology.

Art Nichols

The bulk of Windstream’s traffic is sent using 100-gigabit wavelengths. Moving to 800-gigabit will reduce its optical transport costs.

Windstream will also be able to cram more digital traffic down its fibre. It sends 12 terabits and that could grow to 40 terabits.

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Nokia targets 400G era with PSE-V coherent DSP launch

Nokia has unveiled its latest coherent digital signal processor (DSP) family, its fifth-generation Photonic Service Engine dubbed the PSE-V. 

Kyle HollaschTwo devices make up the family: the high-end super coherent PSE-Vs and the compact PSE-Vc for use in pluggable modules.

The PSE-Vc chip is already sampling, the PSE-Vs will sample later this year. 

The PSE-Vs, operating at a 90 gigabaud (GBd) symbol rate, supports transmission distances from local data centres to ultra-long-haul and sub-sea networks while the 64GBd PSE-Vc implements the OIF’s 400ZR standard, ZR+ and beyond.

Nokia has also expanded its coherent optics strategy having completed the acquisition of Elenion Technologies. It is now vertically integrated and is offering coherent optics and its DSPs to partners that include module makers and contract manufacturers.

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