Performance Degradation of Integrated Optical Modulators Due to Electrical Crosstalk

Abstract

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A modulator-free quantum key distribution transmitter chip

“…All the existing QKD photonic integrated circuits (PICs) achieve this function on-chip using high-speed interferometric modulation. This approach, also in use in classical communications 14 , requires integrating multiple large footprint electro-optic modulation components, which operate at high powers and are vulnerable to chirp, residual amplitude modulation and electrical crosstalk 15 . Moreover, because of the need of phase coherence between the pulses, gain-switching is avoided and the same technique is again utilized to generate pulses from continuous wave laser sources.…”

Monolithic 300 Gb/s Parallel Transmitter in InP-Based Generic Photonic Integration Technology

“…In a high density transmitter, coupling between high-speed RF lines and modulator electrodes can lead to electrical crosstalk noise that is transferred into the optical domain and degrades the transmitter performance. This has been observed for both intensity modulated and phase-intensity modulated signals [32], [33] and we have presented empirical and theoretical relations between electrical crosstalk magnitude and crosstalk penalty [34]. The underlying noise generation mechanisms include radiative, substrate and circuit level crosstalk.…”

“…These fundamental physical coupling mechanisms between neighboring components lead to electrical, thermal and optical crosstalk and are worthwhile investigating. They have gained recent attention in the research community, resulting in several studies [10], [11], [30]- [32]. In this section, we will summarize relevant results from our previous work regarding crosstalk effects in InP transmitters and detail how we applied the insight gained to the demonstrator transmitter design presented in this paper.…”

“…5, RF lines with shared ground return electrodes suffer from circuit level ground bounce noise and exhibit a high crosstalk level. A reduction of 20 dB can be achieved by utilizing individual ground return paths [32], which have been adopted in this work for the transmitter design. A separation distance of at least 50 µm needs to be adopted to keep the coupling below -40 dB.…”

Prospects for Electronic Photonic Integration

“…Eliminating non-functional area is essential to footprint reduction but leads to profound challenges in terms of optical, electronic [10] and thermal [11] crosstalk as well as optical, electrical and thermal connectivity as information density increases and heat transfer must be more efficiently managed. Nonetheless, monolithic photonic integration offers the powerful advantage of seamless coupling light between active and passive components with differing bandgaps and function with zero-length butt-joint interfaces and the smallest areas.…”