Reduced Equalization Needs of 100 GHz Bandwidth Plasmonic Modulators

Abstract

As bit rates of optical interconnects increase, a large amount of complicated signal conditioning is needed to compensate for the insufficient bandwidth of current modulators. In this paper, we evaluate the reduced equalization requirements of high-bandwidth plasmonic modulators in short-reach transmission experiments. It is shown that transmission of 100 Gbit/s nonreturn-to-zero (NRZ) and 112 Gbit/s pulse-amplitude modulation-4 over 1 km and 2 km distance is possible without any receiver equalization. At higher bit-rates, such as 120 Gbit/s NRZ, data transmission is demonstrated over 500 m with reduced receiver equalization requirements. Transmission up to 200 Gbit/s over 1 km is also shown with more complex receiver equalization. The reduced complexity of the receiver digital signal processing is attributed to a flat frequency response of at least 108 GHz of the plasmonic modulators. All single wavelength transmissions have been performed at 1540 nm in standard single mode fiber.

Ultra-High-Speed 2:1 Digital Selector and Plasmonic Modulator IM/DD Transmitter Operating at 222 GBaud for Intra-Datacenter Applications

“…The RRM implementation has been realized on the silicon photonics platform [9] with a bit-rate beyond 100 Gbit/s and on the plasmonic-organic hybrid platform [10] with an EO bandwidth beyond 100 GHz. The MZM concept has been demonstrated on different technology platforms including lithium niobate [11], [12], silicon photonics [13], [14], silicon-organic hybrid [15], indium phosphide [16], [17], polymer photonics [18], [19], and plasmonics [20], [21].…”

“…While there are many promising modulator technologies available, only few support highest symbol rates, and up to now, only complex IM/DD transmitters beyond 200 Gb/s have been demonstrated. Constrained by bandwidth-limited components, the modulation of multiple bits per symbol [4], [12], [14], [21], [22], the discrete multi-tone (DMT) modulation [16], [23] or the Kramers-Kronig (KK) technique [24], [25] can help to achieve bit-rates beyond 200 Gb/s per wavelength. However, this comes at the price of advanced DSP or additional electrical and optical components.…”

100 Gbaud On–Off Keying/Pulse Amplitude Modulation Links in C-Band for Short-Reach Optical Interconnects

“…We foresee that the industrial solution for codesigned and cointegrated electronics and photonics is around the corner. The required ultrahigh bandwidth building blocks are available: integrated circuits for generating PAM4 [43,44] even without equalization [45]; modulators and photodetectors (PD) [17,39,46]; and analogue to digital converter (ADC) frontend for receivers [47]. We also need to mention that electronic instruments, such as arbitrary waveform generators (AWG) and digital storage oscilloscopes (DSO), have reached sampling rates beyond 200 GSa/s with plenty of bandwidth for 100 Gbaud signals.…”

Design Investigation of 4 × 4 Nonblocking Hybrid Plasmonic Electrooptic Switch

“…This can be achieved by using plasmonic technology, which enables the fabrication of these devices with a subwavelength scale, while the diffraction limit is overcome by confinement of light waves at the metal-dielectric interface [22][23][24]. Different structures of lasers [25], waveguides [26], photodetectors [27][28][29], optical modulators [30,31], and optical switches [32,33] have been implemented in different material systems using plasmonic technology. It is worth mentioning here that conventional plasmonic waveguides based on metal/dielectric or metal-dielectric-metal structure are characterized by relatively high intrinsic loss [34,35].…”