This course teaches you how to design, fabricate and characterise photonic circuits and discusses their performance.

You will also consider emerging topics such as coherent systems and sub-system integration.

Applications are discussed in communications and high-precision measurement.

Who this course is for

The department's short courses/CPD modules are aimed at those working in the telecommunications industry such as researchers, engineers, IT professionals and managers.

They're particularly suited to graduates in electronic and electrical engineering, communications engineering and computer science who want to further their knowledge on a particular topic, or work towards a Master's degree.

You don't need to have any pre-requisite qualifications to take this course.

Course content

The course covers the following topics:

Modulation coding formats and multiplexing

Coding formats; multiplexing; bandwidth efficiency; noise; bit error rate (BER); Receiver design: detection threshold level; intersymbol interference; wave shaping; hamming distance; forward error correction (FEC); constellation symbol diagrams; transmitter design, RZ, NRZ, CSRZ

Photonic modulator devices

Quantum confined stark effect (QCSE); electro-absorption modulator (EAM); asymmetric Fabry Perot modulator (AFPM); Mach-Zehnder modulator (MZ); semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA); travelling wave amplifier (TWA); electro-optic polymer fibre modulator; phase modulators; amplitude-phase coupling, henry factor; polarisation modulation

Optical fibre amplifier devices

Erbium doped fibre amplifiers (EDFA); optical pumping; saturation; Raman amplifier; cascaded optical fibre amplifiers; signal to noise ratio; amplified spontaneous emission (ASE); power self-regulation; unrepeatered submarine optical fibre links

Photonic transmitter design

Laser drive circuit with two feedback loops; bias-T laser Driver; AC or DC coupling; parasitic impedances; case study of real laser driver designs

Direct detection receiver design

Clock recovery; front end circuit designs; bandwidth, noise, receiver dynamic range planar

Photonic circuits

Silicon optical microbench; silicon v-grooves; transmitter optical sub-assembly (TOSA); receiver optical sub-assembly (ROSA); compact transceiver sub-assemblies, XFP, SFP, SFP+; microelectromechanical systems (MEMS); silicon waveguides; plasmonic integrated circuits; silica waveguides on silicon wafers; polymer waveguides on printed circuit boards; 80 Gb/s pluggable optical connector design

Industrial design case study: optical link design

Photodetector noise in optical communications systems

Types of noise; calculation of total noise by combining the noise contributions; signal to noise ratio effect on the photocurrent

Wireless over fibre transmission systems

Link analysis; signal to noise ratio; link linearisation; optical feed-forward transmitter circuit; performance; eye diagrams; single mode and multimode wireless over fibre links; intermediate frequency (IF) over optical multimode fibre (MMF); digital signals over MMF; radio frequency over MMF; frequency response and eye diagrams; commercial case studies

Future coherent optical systems

Fundamental coherent detection principles; coherent detection theory; homodyne, heterodyne and intradyne detection; coherent gain; balanced detection; noise; BER

Advanced modulation formats and their detection and demodulation

QPSK; 90 degree optical hybrids; quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM); orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM); IQ receivers; polarisation modulation

Optical phase locking

Optical phase locked loops (OPLL); loop filter response; the effect of laser phase noise on locking stability; laser injection locking; digital optical coherent receivers; digital signal processing (DSP)

High precision measurement (metrology) and precise frequency generation

Laser range finding systems; light detection and ranging (LIDAR); generation of multiple narrow laser spectral lines equally spaced in frequency, frequency comb; mode-locked lasers; time domain spectroscopy; calibration of time relative to an atomic clock; terahertz and microwave radiation generation and detection

This course is held in person at the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, UCL, Roberts Building, London, WC1E 7JE.

Cost: £1,500