SPRINTER is an Horizon Europe project, funded by the European Union, coming as a pragmatic innovation action, that will rely on well-proven photonic integration technologies, in order to develop a complete solution tailored to the diverse needs of industrial networks underpinning the way towards the 4th Industrial Revolution (Industry 4.0).
SPRINTER will combine the best-of-breed optical components and methods from various powerful but complementary photonic integration platforms to develop a set of low-cost, energy-efficient, and ultra-dynamic optical transceivers and optical switching solutions to cope with the diverse needs of the industrial networks and expedite their truly digital transformation.
Within SPRINTER low-cost and energy-efficient 200 Gb/s optical transceivers, supporting high-capacity connectivity, will be developed.
Additionally, SPRINTER will provide ultra-fast wavelength-tunable 10 Gb/s optical transceivers, enabling the development of an all-optical switching system, guaranteeing the reliability and time determinism required for time critical communication.
Leveraging well-proven integration techniques that allow for the fabrication of complex 3D photonic integrated circuits, the project will develop a disruptive reconfigurable optical add-drop multiplexer, optimized for operation within space-division multiplexing networks, assisting on the reduction of data congestion in communication systems and preventing the data loss and delay in data delivery.
Considering the ultra-dynamic nature of the industrial networks due to the deployment of remote nodes, SPRINTER will provide a set of groundbreaking photonics-enabled transceivers supporting wireless connectivity by means of a free-space optical or a mmWave channel. The transceivers will be able to operate reliably in both indoor and outdoor environments thanks to the complementary characteristics of the two channels. Moreover, the project will develop a unified network platform, providing the required methods and tools to support time-deterministic operation, and enable real-time communication with guaranteed service quality.
SPRINTER's developed technology will be evaluated within application scenarios that will be deployed in a relevant industrial environment incorporating a fully operational closed-loop control system.