Photonic integrated devices for high-capacity data-center interconnect

Abstract

Emerging short-reach data center interconnect (typically in the range of tens of km) is a scenario wherein the capacity has to be maximized over point-to-point optical links without intermediate optical amplification, i.e. unrepeated links. For this application, cost and compactness of the optical transceiver form factor to fit the faceplate density requirement are essential to keep up with the bandwidth demand inside hyper-scale data centers. For the optical module to fit in the current dimensions of client routers without compromising the performance, both the electronics and the optics have to be efficiently designed. As far as the opto-electronic is concerned, photonic integrated circuits (PIC) have been discussed in the community so that all the photonic functionalities are performed accordingly with the physical dimensions, power budget and performance specifications. This paper addresses the basic building blocks of silicon photonics coherent optical transceivers, from the design to experimental validation. In addition to the silicon optical modulator, basic components such as polarization splitter-rotators (PSRs) and optical filters will be addressed.