RoadMap was founded on four patents licensed from the Cambridge Centre for Advanced Photonics and Electronics (CAPE) in the area of silicon wavelength switch technology.

Network operators are facing the triple challenge of increasing capacity to fulfill exploding internet data needs, managing unrelenting downward pressure on Opex and Capex costs, and supporting variable and fast evolving service features and demand patterns that put a premium on network configuration flexibility. This leads to a requirement for very flexible optical switching that can operate at the wavelength level. Conventional switch architectures no longer meet this need as they cannot accommodate next generation 400 gbps data rates.

Reconfigurable Optical Add/Drop Multiplexers (“ROADMs”) within the network must be competitive and have good manufacturability whilst being able to accommodate the flexibility and programmable functionality required. Within ROADMs the Wavelength Selective Switches (WSS) is the key component and the market has already chosen RoadMap’s core technology, namely Liquid crystal on silicon (“LCoS”) as the way in which WSS’s will be made as it has several major advantages. It allows nearly all parameters to be programmable and upgraded by software-remotely and cheaply.