Abstract
We report error-free long-haul transmission of optical data modulated using a silicon microring resonator electro-optic modulator with modulation rates up to 12.5 Gb/s. Using bit-error-rate and power penalty characterizations, we evaluate the performance of this device with varying modulation rates, and perform a comparative analysis using a commercial electro-optic modulator. We then experimentally measure the signal integrity degradation of the high-speed optical data with increasing propagation distances, induced chromatic dispersions, and bandwidth-distance products, showing error-free transmission for propagation distances up to 80 km. These results confirm the functional ubiquity of this silicon modulator, establishing the potential role of silicon photonic interconnects for chip-scale high-performance computing systems and memory access networks, optically-interconnected data centers, as well as high-performance telecommunication networks spanning large distances.
Highlights
The lightwave is modulated on chip using the microring resonator, which is driven by a pulse pattern generator (PPG) generating a 27–1 pseudo-random bit sequence (PRBS), followed by a pre-emphasis circuit
The signal is received by a high-speed PIN photodiode and transimpedance amplifier (PIN-TIA) receiver followed by a limiting amplifier (LA), and is evaluated using a BER tester (BERT)
Using BER and power penalty characterizations, we have demonstrated a silicon microring resonator electro-optic modulator with error-free transmission for modulation rates up to 12.5 Gb/s
Summary
Silicon photonics is recently emerging as a promising solution for bandwidth and energy challenges of future interconnects [1,2,3,4,5,6,7], touting compatibility with existing complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) fabrication processes [1,3,8,9], capability of large-scale integration with advanced microelectronics [1,3], ultra-small footprints [10,11,12], and low power consumption [9,10,11,12]. Many high-performance silicon photonic devices such as modulators [9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19], switches [11,20,21,22], and germanium-integrated photodetectors [1,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31,32], have already been demonstrated for use in interconnection networks. We characterize a highperformance silicon microring resonator electro-optic modulator, and determine its feasibility for use in both medium- and long-haul optical communication networks. To the best of our knowledge, we present the first experimental demonstration of an error-free long-haul (up to 80-km) transmission using a high-speed (up to 12.5-Gb/s) and compact (12-μm diameter) silicon microring modulator, demonstrating a bandwidth-distance product up to 1000 Gb-km/s. We perform bit-error-rate (BER) and power penalty characterizations for varying propagation distances, induced chromatic dispersions, and bandwidth-distance products
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary 
Published Version
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call