170 Gbit/s transmission in an erbium-doped waveguide amplifier on silicon

Jonathan D B Bradley,Jean-Claude Simon,Laurent Bramerie,Kerstin Wörhoff,Markus Pollnau,Mathilde Gay,Marcia Costa E Silva,Alfred Driessen

doi:10.1364/oe.17.022201

Abstract

Signal transmission experiments were performed at 170 Gbit/s in an integrated Al(2)O(3):Er(3+) waveguide amplifier to investigate its potential application in high-speed photonic integrated circuits. Net internal gain of up to 11 dB was measured for a continuous-wave 1532 nm signal under 1480 nm pumping, with a threshold pump power of 4 mW. A differential group delay of 2 ps between the TE and TM fundamental modes of the 5.7-cm-long amplifier was measured. When selecting a single polarization open eye diagrams and bit error rates equal to those of the transmission system without the amplifier were observed for a 1550 nm signal encoded with a 170 Gbit/s return-to-zero pseudo-random 2(7)-1 bit sequence.

Highlights

One of the key driving forces behind integrated optics, and silicon photonics, is the potential for higher data transmission rates compared to integrated electronic circuits [0]
An erbium-doped fiber amplifier (EDFA) was used to boost the signal followed by an optical attenuator and polarization controller to adjust the amount of power and the polarization of the signal light coupled to the device, respectively
The bit error rate (BER) was measured as a function of the input power on the electrical time division demultiplexing receiver (ETDM) 42.5 Gbit/s receiver for 0.5 mW and 0.1 mW of signal power and a pump power of 65 mW launched into the erbium-doped waveguide amplifiers (EDWA)

Summary

Introduction

One of the key driving forces behind integrated optics, and silicon photonics, is the potential for higher data transmission rates compared to integrated electronic circuits [0]. Data rates as high as 160 Gbit/s have been demonstrated in long-haul optical fiber networks [2] and in the future transmission at this speed can be expected at the chip level In such integrated photonic circuits, several enabling elements would be required, including an amplifier to boost the optical signal at various stages. An erbium-doped fiber amplifier (EDFA) was used to boost the signal followed by an optical attenuator and polarization controller to adjust the amount of power and the polarization of the signal light coupled to the device, respectively. An optical sampling oscilloscope (with 1 ps resolution) was used for visualization

Visualization nm pump laser

Findings

Conclusions