Abstract
According to different transmission distances, application scenarios of a data center mainly include intra- and inter-data center optical interconnects. The intra-data center optical interconnect is considered as a few kilometers optical interconnect between servers and racks inside a data center, which accounts for nearly 80% of data traffic of a data center. The other one, inter-data center optical interconnect, is mainly applied in tens of kilometers data transmission among different data centers. Since data exchange in data centers generally occurs between many servers and racks, and a lot of transmitter and receiver components are required, optical interconnects become highly sensitive to component costs. In this paper, we firstly review the development and applications of mainstream transmitter components (e.g., VCSEL, DML, EML, MZM, and monolithic integrated transmitter) and receiver components (e.g., single-end photodetector, Kramers-Kronig receiver, Stokes vector receiver, and monolithic integrated receiver), which have been widely applied in short-reach transmission systems. Then, two types of integrated solutions including simplified detection scheme and transceiver integration scheme are presented in detail. Finally, we summarize and discuss the technological and component options for different transmission distances. We believe that monolithic integrated components, especially transceiver integration, will become a powerful solution for next-generation high-speed short-reach transmission systems.
Highlights
In recent years, with the applications of various multimedia and data services (e.g., Internet of Things, cloud computing, remote surgery, the construction of 5G, and beyond 5G networks), global network traffic has presented explosive growth over the past decade [1]
We review the mainstream transmitter components (e.g., vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL)/directly modulated laser (DML)/ electro-absorption modulated laser (EML)/Mach-Zehnder modulator (MZM)/monolithic integrated transmitter) and receiver components
A simplified detection scheme and two transceiver integration schemes under direct and coherent detection have been presented in detail
Summary
With the applications of various multimedia and data services (e.g., Internet of Things, cloud computing, remote surgery, the construction of 5G, and beyond 5G networks), global network traffic has presented explosive growth over the past decade [1]. In addition to the digital coherent technology and the traditional IM/DD technology, some advanced direct detection technologies such as Kramers-Kronig receiver [17,18] and Stokes vector receiver [19,20,21] have been proposed and studied extensively Since these techniques can reconstruct the complex domain of the signal, rate-distance product can be further improved by combing impairments compensation algorithms and advanced modulation technology. An effective solution, a transceiver integration scheme based on the digital coherent technology [26,27], has been reported and shows the potential to reduce cost and footprint size of the transmitter and receiver components dramatically.
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