Active fibers: integration of miniaturized optoelectronic devices on optical fibers

The new 'Optoelectronics on Fiber' technology envisions novel fiber based active platforms combining the unique characteristics of the optical fibers with miniaturized advanced optoelectronic chips. Many reliable chip-to-fiber integration procedures have been recently proposed, giving rise to actively controllable multifunctional all-fiber devices with emission, detection, modulation, and sensing capabilities integrated in a single unit. The possibility to squeeze the entire optical interrogation setup (source, fiber, detector) into a single unit, with compact footprint, represents a technological and scientific breakthrough in many fields ranging from IoT up to biomedical technologies, that are currently limited by bulky interrogation systems.