Model-based platform for design space exploration in single-microring-based silicon photonic interconnects on chip

Abstract

A large number of optical routers have been proposed for optical network-on-chips (ONoCs). The performance of optical routers is usually evaluated by measurement after fabrication or simulation before fabrication. In simulations, a common method is to set the component performance, such as insertion loss and crosstalk, to fixed values. The performance of optical routers is obtained by combining these values. In this way, the design parameters are not taken into consideration for evaluation. In this work, we propose and establish a model-based platform for single-microring(MR)-based silicon photonic interconnect on chip, taking the impact of design parameters into consideration. The application of our platform is characteristic of fast and effective performance evaluation. We study the influence of the design parameters, and evaluate the performance of MR-based optical routers and ONoCs on the platform, including insertion loss, crosstalk, MR tuning costs, the required laser power and BER. The simulation results provide a more accurate reference for router design before fabrication