Single chip silicon single sideband modulator with high sideband suppression ratio

Abstract

We demonstrate a single chip silicon-based optical single sideband (OSSB) modulator which is composed of a branch line coupler (BLC) and a silicon dual-parallel Mach-Zehnder modulator (DP-MZM). Benefit from the powerful tool of optical domain compensation we propose, the constrains such as power imbalance and phase offset of BLC are eliminated. As a result, we realize a fully functional OSSB chip to implement full carrier OSSB (FC-OSSB) and suppressed carrier OSSB (SC-OSSB) modulations. The maximum sideband suppression ratio (SSR) of 35 dB is derived at 21 GHz.