Ireland's largest research centre, the Tyndall National Institute, is to head a European consortium which is looking to create thermally intelligent circuits to cope with the increasing demands of data traffic.

The consortium has secured €5.2 million in Horizon 2020 funding for the Thermally Integrated Smart Photonics System project, that sees industry and research partners from Ireland, Germany, the Netherlands and France coming together to develop circuits that can make photonic devices up to five times more efficient, to ensure faster data transmission at a lower cost.

With an anticipated 11.5 billion mobile-ready devices in the world by 2020 and the increasing connectivity of those devices through the Internet of Things, it is predicted that current operational bandwidth will be insufficient to cope with increasing data demands.

Tyndall National Institute will work with partners from III-V Lab, University of Hamburg, Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs Ireland, CNRS Institutes, Stokes Institute University of Limerick, LioniX BV, Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs France, and Communicraft on the three-year project.