COST Action CA16220: European Network for High Performance Integrated Microwave Photonics

Next generation global telecommunication platforms and emerging massive take-up applications in radar, communications and space industries will require entirely new technologies to address the current limitations of electronics for massive capacity and connectivity. Multigigabit-per-second 5G wireless communications, the Internet of Things, the upcoming Smart Car scenarios and satellite payloads will require a full convergence between optical fibre and wireless segments.Microwave photonics (MWP) combines RF and photonics and is the best positioned technology to carry out this convergence. Current MWP systems, however, are fiber and discrete-component based, which limits energy-efficiency, flexibility and scalability, and, as a result, high volume application. Integrated Microwave Photonics (IMWP) seeks to address these limitations by incorporating these systems into photonic integrated circuits (PICs). IMWP is still at its infancy and a considerable body of knowledge, technical and scientific roadmaping and interactions between industry academia need to be developed during the next years.The European Network for High Performance Integrated Microwave Photonics (EUIMWP) Action aims to shape and bring the relevant IMWP community supporting coordination and networking actions to consolidate this new IMWP ecosystem, providing exchange of knowledge, ideas and delivering a portfolio of technological benchmarkings to establish performance indicators defining future technological requirements in high performance scenarios such as 5G, automotive and aerospace technologies.The action brings together groups from academia, industry and transnational organizations with complementary competences and on a global scale including PIC and MWP experts, microwave system application designers and end-users to fully develop the synergies required by this new paradigm.