Modified SiP single-polarization CADD receiver.

Abstract

In cost-sensitive application scenarios, increasing the data rate per channel under a limited receiver bandwidth is critical, and thus, the transceivers with low costs and high electrical spectral efficiencies (ESEs) are highly desirable. In this Letter, we demonstrate a modified silicon photonic (SiP) carrier-assisted differential detection (CADD) receiver with a record ESE for single polarization. The ESE of the conventional CADD is mainly limited by the transfer function that originated from the optical delay and hybrid. We modify the transfer function of the CADD by placing an additional delay in parallel to the original delay path. Consequently, the modified transfer function exhibits a sharper slope around the zero frequency, leading to a higher ESE. Here we employ complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor-compatible SiP integration to further reduce the cost and footprint of the modified CADD receiver. In the experiment, 280-Gb/s raw rate (net 226-Gb/s) 16-QAM OFDM signal after 80-km SMF transmission was detected using a 36.5-GHz SiP modified CADD receiver, with a bit error ratio below the 24% SD-FEC threshold. To our best knowledge, we achieve a record net 6.2-b/s/Hz ESE for an integrated single-polarization DD receiver with a 16-QAM format.