Silicon-organic hybrid (SOH) frequency comb sources for terabit/s data transmission

Abstract-Silicon photonics offers tremendous potential for inexpensive high-yield photonic-electronic integration. Besides conventional dielectric waveguides, plasmonic structures can also be efficiently realized on the silicon photonic platform, reducing device footprint by more than an order of magnitude. However, neither silicon nor metals exhibit appreciable second-order optical nonlinearities, thereby making efficient electro-optic modulators challenging to realize. These deficiencies can be overcome by the concepts of silicon-organic hybrid (SOH) and plasmonicorganic hybrid (POH) integration, which combine silicon-oninsulator (SOI) waveguides and plasmonic nanostructures with organic electro-optic cladding materials.Index Terms-Electro-optic modulators, photonic integrated circuits, silicon photonics, plasmonics, nonlinear optical devicesElectro-optic (EO) modulators are key building blocks for highly integrated photonic-electronic circuits on the silicon

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“…In silicon, the carrierinduced refractive index change is dominated by the contribution of holes and can be approximated by 18 2.4 0.8 Si…”

Section: Appendix: Charge Transfer In Optical Phase Shiftersmentioning

confidence: 99%

Silicon-Organic Hybrid (SOH) and Plasmonic-Organic Hybrid (POH) Integration

Koos

Leuthold

Freude

et al. 2015

Optical Fiber Communication Conference

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“…For application in optical communications, frequency comb sources must be compact. In recent years, a wide variety of chip-scale comb generators have been demonstrated [14,15], enabling transmission of WDM data streams with line rates [16] of up to 12 Tbit/s. Transmission at higher line rates however, requires more carriers and lower noise levels, and still relies on spectral broadening of narrowband seed combs using dedicated optical fibers [8,11,12] or nanophotonic waveguides [17].…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Microresonator-based solitons for massively parallel coherent optical communications

Marin-Palomo

Kemal

Karpov

et al. 2017

Nature

1,088

713

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Optical solitons are waveforms that preserve their shape while propagating, relying on a balance of dispersion and nonlinearity [1,2]. Soliton-based data transmission schemes were investigated in the 1980s, promising to overcome the limitations imposed by dispersion of optical fibers. These approaches, however, were eventually abandoned in favor of wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) schemes that are easier to implement and offer improved scalability to higher data rates. Here, we show that solitons may experience a comeback in optical communications, this time not as a competitor, but as a key element of massively parallel WDM. Instead of encoding data on the soliton itself, we exploit continuously circulating dissipative Kerr solitons (DKS) in a microresonator [3,4]. DKS are generated in an integrated silicon nitride microresonator [5] by four-photon interactions mediated by Kerr nonlinearity, leading to low-noise, spectrally smooth and broadband optical frequency combs [6]. In our experiments, we use two interleaved soliton Kerr combs to trans-mit a data stream of more than 50 Tbit/s on a total of 179 individual optical carriers that span the entire telecommunication C and L bands. Equally important, we demonstrate coherent detection of a WDM data stream by using a pair of microresonator Kerr soliton combs one as a multi-wavelength light source at the transmitter, and another one as a corresponding local oscillator (LO) at the receiver. This approach exploits the scalability advantages of microresonator soliton comb sources for massively parallel optical communications both at the transmitter and receiver side. Taken together, the results prove the significant potential of these sources to replace arrays of continuous-wave lasers in high-speed communications. In combination with advanced spatial multiplexing schemes [7,8] and highly integrated silicon photonic circuits [9], DKS combs may bring chip-scale petabit/s transceivers into reach.The first observation of solitons in optical fibers [2] in 1980 was immediately followed by major research efforts to harness such waveforms for long-haul communications [1]. In these schemes, data was encoded on soliton pulses by simple amplitude modulation using on-off-keying (OOK). However, even though the viability of the approach was experimentally demonstrated by transmission over one million kilometres [10], the vision of soliton-based communications was ultimately hindered by difficulties in achieving shape-preserving propagation in real transmission systems [1] and by the fact that nonlinear interactions intrinsically prevent dense packing of soliton pulses in either the time or frequency domain. Moreover, with the advent of wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM), line rates in long-haul communication systems could be increased by rather simple parallel transmission of data streams with lower symbol rates, which are less dispersion sensitive. Consequently, soliton-based communication schemes have moved out of focus over the last two decades. More recently, frequ...

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“…In addition to Lithium Niobate (LiN bO 3 ) and Indium Phosphide (InP), silicon organic hybrid (SOH) modulators with low V π have also been used for comb generation [78], [79]. The typical bandwidth of commercially available (LiN bO 3 ) modulators is 20 GHz-40 GHz.…”

Section: A Electro-optic Optical Frequency Comb Generatorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These include InP [78], [101], [102] and SOH [79], which have been recently demonstrated using state of the art photonic integration techniques. A 9×12.5 GHz line optical comb was generated using an InP based DD-MZM with 4.3 dB flatness [102] and less than 1 dB [101] spectral flatness.…”

Section: A Electro-optic Optical Frequency Comb Generatorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The OFC was employed in a communication system transmitting an aggregate data rate of 1 Tb/s over 300 km of standard single mode fibre (SSMF). However, it is important to note that such OFCs display high insertion losses (∼21 dB) [79]. DD-MZM based OFCs have also been used as transmitters and as filter-less multi-frequency LOs in multitone coherent matched detection system.…”

Section: A Electro-optic Optical Frequency Comb Generatorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A Survey of Optical Carrier Generation Techniques for Terabit Capacity Elastic Optical Networks

Imran

Anandarajah

Kaszubowska-Anandarajah

et al. 2018

IEEE Commun. Surv. Tutorials

106

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Abstract-Elastic optical networks (EON) have been proposed to meet the network capacity and dynamicity challenges. Hardware and software resource optimization and re-configurability are key enablers for EONs. Recently, innovative multi-carrier transmission techniques have been extensively investigated to realize high capacity (Tb/s) flexible transceivers. In addition to standard telecommunication lasers, optical carrier generators based on optical frequency combs (OFC) have also been considered with expectations of reduced cost and inventory, improved spectral efficiency and flexibility. A wide range of OFC generation techniques have been proposed in the literature over the past few years. It is imperative to summarize the state of the art, compare and assess these diverse techniques from a practical perspective. In this survey, we identify salient features of optical multicarrier generators, review and compare these techniques both from a physical and network layer perspective. OFC demultiplexing/filtering techniques have also been reviewed. In addition to transmission performance, the impact of such sources on the network performance and real-world deployment strategies with reference to cost, power consumption, and level of flexibility have also been discussed. Field trials, integrated solutions, flexibility demonstrations are also reported. Finally, open issues and possible future directions that can lead to real network deployment are highlighted.

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Silicon-organic hybrid (SOH) frequency comb sources for terabit/s data transmission

Cited by 104 publications

References 42 publications

Silicon-Organic Hybrid (SOH) and Plasmonic-Organic Hybrid (POH) Integration

Silicon-Organic Hybrid (SOH) and Plasmonic-Organic Hybrid (POH) Integration

Microresonator-based solitons for massively parallel coherent optical communications

A Survey of Optical Carrier Generation Techniques for Terabit Capacity Elastic Optical Networks

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