NASA: Innovative Optoelectronic Devices Improve Space Communications
Client: NASA
Challenge: Expand communication bandwidth and wavelength range on space missions while reducing costs.
Solution: CSC scientists helped NASA advance the development of optoelectronic device technology, based on the application of nanoscale physics and quantum mechanical engineering.
Results: Advanced development of robust computer simulation codes; improved signal transmission capabilities and telecommunications.
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Through innovative scientific research into optoelectronic device technology, CSC is helping the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) develop faster, better, and cheaper communications on space missions.
Better Communication at Reduced Cost
As space exploration becomes more heavily dependent on information technology, development of new signal generation paradigms is increasingly important in order to expand communication bandwidth and wavelength range while reducing mission cost.
To address this, CSC helped advance the frontier of optoelectronic device technology for NASA by studying the fundamental physical limits of optoelectronic devices: ultimate speed, range of wavelengths that can be generated, and smallest device size. Since becoming a contractor at NASA Ames Research Center in May 1997, CSC's scientific research team has developed several highly innovative design concepts for optoelectronic devices, based on insightful application of nanoscale physics and quantum mechanical engineering.
Semiconductor optoelectronic devices and systems are key components of many information systems, including telecommunications via fiber optics, data communication in a LAN, and future intra-computer optical communications between chips and boards. The frontier of optoelectronics lies in signal generation at increasingly high frequencies, as well as generation of electromagnetic waves of new and useful wavelengths.
CSC's research team proposed, and then demonstrated through numerical simulation, how communication bandwidth can be increased by two orders of magnitude. In a related development, the team demonstrated how the currently bulky and inefficient CO2 lasers can be replaced by tiny diode lasers for terahertz (1012 cycles per second) wave generation. Such improvements in system size, power consumption, and communication speed may lead to a significant reduction in future space mission cost for NASA.
Innovation Through Computer Simulation
Based on microscopic physics, the researchers developed a model to be implemented on NASA's high performance computers. The model deals with the interaction of a high frequency electric field and semiconductor nanostructures. The computer simulation demonstrated the possibility of terahertz modulation and switching of a semiconductor laser by the terahertz field via heating the electrons in a semiconductor. This is a radical departure from the traditional approach of modulating semiconductor lasers, where driving electrical current carries modulating signals.
The innovative ideas and design concepts developed by CSC have been used to guide the development of a solid theoretical investigation and robust computer simulation codes. The corresponding experimental research is being conducted at several universities. The results have been applied to modulate diode lasers for the purpose of signal transmission and for terahertz generation in the wavelength range that is most useful to NASA for heterodye detection applications such as far-infrared astronomy.
Approach
The team's unique knowledge of semiconductor physics allowed CSC to develop the critical innovative ideas that eventually made this optoelectronics research a success for NASA. However, it was long-term planning and focus that ultimately brought that success, which required creating a theoretical and numerical analysis plan, working with collaborators to develop software to test the ideas, running and analyzing simulations, publicizing results in papers and talks to advance the field, and pursuing patents.
The results of CSC's research represent a paradigm shift in terms of ultra fast optical modulation and generation, and have been published in several papers in world-renowned journals.