Furukawa Electric Review No.56Demonstration of Highly Reliable Si-Photonics-Based In-Vehicle Optical Network (SiPhON) for Autonomous Driving

Daisuke Noguchi, Masayuki Iwase, Masahito Morimoto, Keisuke Kawahara, Masato Shiino, Yuka Sawada, Hitoshi Shimanuki, Hironobu Yoshida, Satoru Torimitsu, Keisuke Oishi, Kei Takahashi, Kei Ishikawa, Minoru Morita

In the automotive industry, the technological innovation in the architecture of invehicle communication has been advancing for conversion to autonomous driving. It is required for the autonomous driving vehicle to equip in-vehicle networks capable of increasing electronics devices of sensors, which has not only high capacity and low delay but also high performance in Electromagnetic Compatibility (EMC). The application of optical communication technology can be proposed to satisfy these requirements. However, we may have problems of deteriorating the reliability of the system when applying light emitting devices in the severe automotive environment. To solve this problem, in our Silicon-Photonics based in-vehicle Optical Network (SiPhON) system, Distributed Feedback (DFB) lasers as light sources are independently arranged and the silicon photonics devices in which optical modulators and optical detectors are linked in a ring system. We have demonstrated that high speed communication is feasible in our system by multistage series connection of independent Continuous Wave (CW) optical sources and optical modulators.