112G baud sub pJ/bit integrated CMOS-silicon photonics transmitter

Abstract

A new design philosophy for integrated CMOS-silicon photonic transmitters is introduced where switching current is applied to the silicon Mach Zehnder Modulator (MZM) rather than operating in the traditional voltage driving mode. With this approach the total electrical energy can be selectively distributed to different frequency components by choosing appropriate inductance and near-end termination impedance values. 112G baud (112Gb/s OOK and 224Gb/s PAM-4) transmission has been experimentally demonstrated with a real power efficiency down to the sub pJ/bit regime without the requirement for power hungry pre-emphasis or signal shaping in the data source. A thorough investigation of the BER for different electrical and optical power conditions of our fully integrated optical transmitter at 100G baud + is performed including the electrical power consumption of the driver which is often neglected in other work.

Near-IR & Mid-IR Silicon Photonics Modulators

“…All these modulators have their benefits in terms of specific scopes such as footprints, high bandwidth and low loss. The development of co-designed modulators and drivers shows that all silicon modulators can meet the bandwidth and power consumption requirements for the photonics transceiver applications [4,30]. The success of these paves the way for the development of the mid-IR modulators.…”

“…High-speed silicon modulators with a speed of 112 GBaud PAM-4 have been demonstrated by co-design of CMOS electronics and photonics Mach-Zehnder modulators (MZM) [4], and 120 GBaud PAM-4 has also been realised in compact silicon microring modulators (MRM) [5]. The MRM version modulators benefit from compact sizes < 10 µm and low capacitance, allowing high bandwidth densities and high energy efficiencies in terabit links now [6] and petabit scale links in future [7].…”