News

23 April 2010

 

ODIS receives additional AFRL awards

Following an award of $750,000 in January 2010, ODIS Inc (Opel Defense Integrated Systems) of Shelton, CT, USA, which designs communications transceivers, optoelectric integrated platforms and infrared sensor type products for military and industrial applications, has received two additional AFRL awards for $850,000, totaling $1.6m so far this year.

The first award is for $100,000 to develop an “Ultra Low Power RAM”, a novel memory cell using ODIS’ optoelectronic thyristor within its III-V Planar OptoElectric Technology (POET). Very high density and low storage power may be achieved with the cell represented as the cross-point of an array, says the firm. The memory design enables it to be fully compatible with integrated optoelectronic CHFET/thyristor logic and optical I/O. Fabricated in radiation hard GaAs, the structure enables both static and dynamic operation.

The second award is for $750,000 to develop Optoelectronic Directional Couplers for Switching Fabric. ODIS says that switching fabric on a single chip is a device technology that is required to enable the coordination and routing of multiple optical input signals to arbitrary multiple output ports without optoelectronic conversation. The technology is aimed at future military satellite applications.

Relating to the first award, Dr Geoff Taylor, chief scientist at ODIS, said: “The digital signal processing and static memory, currently implemented exclusively in CMOS technology have now reached scaling limits in chip size and power. The new memory cell uses the thyristor latching function in the vertical direction to achieve super high density and a power down mode within an inversion channel to achieve ultra-low storage dissipation.”

Regarding the second award, Taylor said: “ODIS’s development of POET as an integrated optoelectronic platform with the capability to realize arrays of in-plane optical switches and the associated optoelectronic routing circuitry, will

enable it to meet AFRL’s satellite communications technology requirements on a single chip or chipset. Here as well, the OE integration reduces the weight and power of the craft and indicates a pathway to realize the high speed satellite OE systems of the future.”

“In my opinion, the receipt of these Awards so closely to the last one indicates that ODIS, through the use of the patented POET process, is being viewed as having the potential to produce tremendous cost savings with enhanced capability to the U.S. Air Force and Space Missile Command in future missions,” said Leon (Lee) Pierhal, president of ODIS. “Quite significant is the opportunity to address the high density memory market for next generation data processors which is identified to be a huge market as the chip industry pushes Moore’s law beyond the limits of Si CMOS into the optoelectronic world. The Phase II technology effort embraces low cost switch architecture and component capability to address the distribution of fiber optic signals for LAN, MAN and WAN applications and for the exploding “Fiber to the Home” commercial market.”

See related items:

ODIS wins AFRL contract for monolithic IR imaging and readout ICs

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