OPTIMA aims at demonstrating photonic payloads for telecommunication satellites by joining the efforts of industrial and academic European actors from both the worlds of space and terrestrial communications. In the near future, a major increase in telecoms satellites capacity is required to address the challenges of the Digital Agenda for Europe, and to remain in line with the skyrocketing evolution of terrestrial communications, in a globally connected world. A major technological breakthrough is needed to meet the capacity increase objectives within the mass, size and power envelope allowed by the foreseen evolution of launchers and satellite platforms. Photonics has largely contributed to the revolution of Information Technology for ground applications and is the most promising technology to overcome the issues faced by Satcoms, thanks to the compact, lightweight and low-power nature of optical-fibre based equipment. However, great efforts are required to bring these benefits to the world of telecoms payloads as all the photonics equipment used on ground need to be adapted for space. In OPTIMA, Airbus Defence and Space (UK, FR), a world-leading satellite prime manufacturer, will define, assemble and a test photonic payload demonstrator based on building blocks developed, adapted for space and provided by other members of the consortium: DAS Photonics (ES), Linkra (IT), SODERN (FR), IMEC (BE) and Polatis (UK). By gathering all these actors around a concrete project, in a real-world industrial environment, OPTIMA will provide a strong initial impulse to make photonics technology available to the Satcom industry and pave the way towards an in-orbit demonstration as early as 2020. This will not only allow the European space industry to address the challenges of the DAE 2020, but also strengthen its position in a very competitive, worldwide market and create new opportunities for each of the members of the consortium (new applications, products and markets).

Microwave photonics technology (MWP) has the potential to create a huge commercial impact by bringing together the worlds of microwave engineering and photonics and by enabling processing functionalities in microwave systems that are complex or totally impossible in the microwave domain. The main reason for not having achieved this so far has been the lack of a photonic integration technology that could address the specific needs of MWP. HAMLET aims to fill this gap and develop a disruptive photonic integration platform that will enable the development of very large scale photonic integrated circuits (VLSPICs) with cascaded stages of tunable structures for analog and digital signal processing, variety of optical processing functionalities and ultra-low optical loss. To this end, HAMLET will employ two integration levels. At the first one, it will develop a disruptive PZT-based phase-shifter technology on TriPleX platform with lower power consumption compared to thermal phase-shifters by almost one million times. At the same level HAMLET will incorporate the deposition of graphene films as a standard step in the fabrication process of polymer platform and will develop arrays of electro-absorption modulators with high bandwidth (>25 GHz). At the second integration level, HAMLET will bring together the two platforms under a 3D hybrid integration engine, and will develop circuits with record scale of integrated components (>300), record scale of functionalities with optical beamforming for 64-element antenna arrays at first place, and novel use as the interface between the wireless and the optical part at the antenna units of emerging 5G networks. Finally, in parallel with the system-related exploitation, HAMLET will also work on the unification of the two platforms under a multi-project wafer run type of services to external users, where the 3D integration engine will be used for provision of supersets of components and tools already available in the two platforms.

3PEAT will develop a powerful photonic integration technology with all size, functionality and quality credentials in order to help a broad range of optical applications like optical switching and remote sensing, to achieve a strong commercial impact. In order to do so, the project will introduce a fully functional 3D photonic integration platform based on the use of multiple waveguiding layers and vertical couplers in a polymer technology (PolyBoard), as a means to disrupt the integration scale and functionality. Moreover, 3PEAT will combine this powerful 3D photonic technology with a silicon-nitride platform (TriPleX), via the development of a methodology for the deposition and processing of multilayer polymers inside etched windows on TriPleX chips. In parallel with the development of this hybrid 3D technology, 3PeaT will bring a number of key innovations at the integration and component level relating to: a) the heterogeneous integration of PZT films on TriPleX platform for development of phase shifters and switches for operation up to 50 MHz, b) the development of a disruptive external cavity laser on the same platform with linewidth less than 1 kHz, c) the development for the first time of an integrated circulator on PolyBoard with isolation more than 25 dB, and d) the development of flexible types of PolyBoards for the purpose of physical interconnection of other PICs. This enormous breadth of innovations can remove the current limitations and unleash the full potential of optical switching and remote sensing and ranging applications. The main switching module that will be fabricated will be a 36×36 optical switch with 20 ns switching time and possibility for power and cost savings of almost 95% compared to standard electronic solutions. The main sensing module on the other hand will be a disruptive Laser Doppler Vibrometer (LDV) with all of its optical units, including its optical beam scanning unit, integrated on a very large, hybrid 3D PIC.