C-Band Silicon Waveguide Modulation With 50-Gbit/s NRZ-OOK Over 10-km SMF and DSF

Abstract

A low-power-consumption single-arm-driven silicon (Si) Mach-Zehnder modulator (MZM) operated at C-band ( <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\lambda =1550$ </tex-math></inline-formula> nm) for non-return-to-zero on-off-keying (NRZ-OOK) transmission beyond 50 Gbit/s over 10-km single-mode fiber (SMF) and dispersion-shift fiber (DSF) is demonstrated to guarantee the IEEE 802.3bs standardized 400GBASE-FR8/LR8 operation. The Si MZM exhibits asymmetric waveguide arms and 2-mm-contact-length phase shifter under carrier depletion operation in its p-n junction, which is DC biased as low as 2 V to provide a low <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\text{V}_{\pi }\text{L}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> product of <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$0.909~\text {V}\cdot \text {cm}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> . For the error-free transmission of the NRZ-OOK data-stream, the single-arm-driven Si MZM supports the highest data rates of 53, 53 and 50 Gbit/s over optical back-to-back, 2-km SMF and 10-km DSF transmissions, respectively. The 50-Gbit/s receiving power penalties are respectively 0.2 and 0.25 dB after 2-km SMF and 10-km DSF propagation.