Ultrahigh-Speed Optical Interconnects With Thin Film Lithium Niobate Modulator

Abstract

The exponential growth in data-driven applications like artificial intelligence and metaverse poses an increasing demand for integrated optical interconnects with efficient and cost-effective high-capacity solutions. For short-reach optical interconnects dominated by intensity-modulated direct detection (IM-DD), high-speed and large-capacity transmission enabled by high-bandwidth electro-optic devices is always highly desired. In this article, based on a thin film lithium niobate (TFLN) modulator with a 3-dB bandwidth larger than 110 GHz fabricated by ourselves, we experimentally demonstrate ultrahigh-speed optical interconnects with probabilistic shaping pulse amplitude modulation (PS-PAM) signals. With linear pre-equalization and Volterra nonlinear equalizer (VNLE), a 120 Gbaud PS-PAM16 signal with a bit rate up to 408 Gb/s is generated. Compared to the regular-PAM8 signal with the same bit rate of 360Gb/s, the PS-PAM signal demonstrates a receiver sensitivity gain of 2.2 dB. With the help of VNLE, 384.5 Gb/s PS-PAM16 signal can be transmitted over 500 m standard single-mode fiber (SSMF) at the C band. The ultra-broadband TFLN enabled transmission provides a promising solution for future 400G per wavelength data-center interconnects.