Microring Modulator Research Articles

Ultra-compact electro-optic modulator based on alternative plasmonic material.

We propose an ultra-compact electro-optic microring modulator based on a hybrid plasmonic waveguide. In comparison to previously proposed structures, the present structure utilizes aluminum-doped zinc oxide (AZO), rather than noble metals, for plasmon excitation. AZO can be used to simultaneously tune both the real and imaginary parts of the dielectric constant by changing the carrier concentration. The modulation depth and insertion loss of the microring modulator are 18.70 and 2.76 dB. The proposed modulator has a high modulation speed because its capacitance is 0.22 fF. This device could be used in high-density integrated optical circuits.

High-performance quantum-dot distributed feedback laser on silicon for high-speed modulations

We report a 1310 nm heterogeneous quantum-dot distributed feedback laser on silicon with high efficiency and modulation capability and demonstrate isolator-free external modulation at 25 Gb/s using a metal-oxide semiconductor capacitor microring modulator.

Mitigation of carrier induced optical bistability in silicon ring resonators

We present a detailed study of electrical and optical generated free carrier on the spectral characteristics of a silicon microring modulator. The spectral distortion generated due to thermal and free carriers is presented, and the mechanism for mitigation is also presented. We observed that two-photon induced nonlinearity could be addressed by operating the modulator at suitable bias points. Furthermore, by applying small-signal drive the spectral distortion can be restored. We also present the effect of optical power and drive signal limit on the spectral characteristics. The study allows one to identify suitable device performance and operating conditions to utilize silicon ring modulator for optical signal processing.

Ultra-Dense Wavelength-Division Multiplexing With Microring Modulator

Silicon photonics can be used to increase the versatility of wavelength division multiplexing (WDM). Ultra-dense wavelength division multiplexing (uDWDM) shrinks channel spacing between WDM channels to decrease guard bands and increase spectral efficiency. Microring modulators (MRMs) provide a simple solution for uDWDM transmitters - they require no multiplexer/demultiplexer. When used with comb lasers, MRMs provide extremely compact and low power solutions. The spectral efficiency is limited by interchannel interference (ICI) from incomplete isolation of channels. We report an MRM-uDWDM transmitter achieving channel spacing comparable to the symbol rate in each WDM channel, reaching a spectrum occupation of 80%. By choosing the correct operating point, we demonstrate experimentally our fabricated MRM chip design causes no discernable ICI power penalty. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first demonstration of MRM-uDWDM to support such dense channel spacing.

Heterogeneous Optical Access Networks: Enabling Low-Latency 5G Services With a Silicon Photonic Smart Edge

In the 5G era, optical fronthaul is a major challenge in meeting growing demand. Edge computation and coordinated multipoint for 5G have stringent requirements for high throughput and low latency, either in single-wavelength or wavelength-division-multiplexing fronthaul. We propose a new silicon photonic solution to deliver 5G services on existing optical access networks with colorless optical network units, such as passive optical networks. The newly added 5G services form a heterogeneous optical access network. Using the existing fiber infrastructure, broadband services coexist with new 5G signals that can densify 5G coverage. The proposed scheme is both wavelength-selective (in the distribution network) and colorless (at the end user site). We use silicon microring modulators to create subcarriers slaved from the broadband service distributed carrier; additional microring modulators generate 5G signals exploiting those subcarriers. We experimentally validated the successful coexistence of 5G signals (various formats) with a broadband signal (various formats).

PAM-4 generation using an electrostatic doping aided single silicon microring modulator driven by two binary electrical signals

In this paper, we propose and analyze the performance of an on-chip electrostatic doping (ED) aided single silicon microring PAM-4 modulator driven by two binary electrical signals of different peak-to-peak voltages. The proposed ED-aided microring modulator (MRM) is realizable on the standard 220 nm silicon-on-insulator (SOI) platform and can operate over the C-band. The steady state and dynamic performance of the ED-aided MRM is estimated using commercial simulation tools. Also, we have analytically assessed the performance of the proposed PAM-4 modulator in terms of optical modulation amplitude (OMA), transmitter power penalty (TPP), level-deviation (LD), and dynamic energy consumption. Simulation results show that the proposed system can achieve pre-HD FEC bit error rate (BER) of 3.8 × 10−3 at 50 Gb/s over 1 km of standard single mode fiber (SSMF) which is promising for next generation high-speed silicon optic link. Simulation results also indicate that the proposed ED-aided MRM based PAM-4 modulator while operating at 50 Gb/s offers approximately 17.63 dB of extinction ratio (ER) with 2.2 dB of insertion loss (IL) and −2.7 dBm of OMA (for 0 dBm of input optical power). The 3-dB electro-optic bandwidth of such modulator is assessed to be 19.58 GHz. Estimated dynamic energy consumption per bit for 25 Gb/s OOK signal and 50 Gb/s PAM-4 signals are 110.63 and 40.18 fJ, respectively.

Optical isolation using microring modulators

Optical isolators, while commonplace in bulk and fiber optical systems, remain a key missing component in integrated photonics. Isolation using magneto-optic materials has been difficult to integrate into complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS) fabrication platforms, motivating the use of other paths to effective non-reciprocity such as temporal modulation. We demonstrate a non-reciprocal element comprising a pair of microring modulators and a microring phase shifter in an active silicon photonic process, which, in combination with standard bandpass filters, yields an isolator on-chip. Isolation up to 13 dB is measured with a 3 dB bandwidth of 2 GHz and insertion loss of 18 dB. We also show transmission of a 4 Gbps optical data signal through the isolator while retaining a wide-open eye diagram. This compact design, in combination with increased modulation efficiency, could enable modulator-based isolators to become a standard ‘black-box’ component in integrated photonics CMOS foundry platform component libraries.

Field enhancement assisted graphene‐based microring modulator for high modulation depth

This study aims at optimising the graphene coverage in a microresonator for the design of an efficient modulator by using a combination of graphene induced losses and phase shift. The graphene integration in the ring can provide tunability by means of altering the loss and coupling coefficient by changing the graphene coverage or its chemical potential. The fundamental parameters of graphene integrated all-pass ring resonator are extracted based on the transmission characteristics using finite-difference time-domain method. As compared to conventional graphene-oxide-semiconductor straight waveguide, graphene integrated on an all-pass ring resonator shows enhanced optical absorption and phase shift due to field enhancement factor. A modulator based on graphene tunable loss and phase shift is investigated taking into account the field enhancement factor. For 1.55 μm radiation and ring radius of 3.75 μm with 22% graphene coverage, a maximum modulation depth of 12.6 dB is demonstrated based on electrostatic control of graphene chemical potential. The proposed modulator can feature operational speed in the range of 10 GHz that is useful in a variety of electro-optic applications.

Integrated silicon reconfigurable optical transmitter.

We demonstrate an integrated silicon reconfigurable optical transmitter based on the reconfigurability of the Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI). By incorporating modulators into the tunable MZI structure and manipulating the operation states, different modulation formats, including amplitude/phase modulated binary/quaternary signals, as well as polarization multiplexed signals, can be generated as required, to accommodate different transmission links. For a proof-of-concept demonstration, the microring modulators are adopted, and we experimentally generate a 10 GBaud on-off keying (OOK) signal, four-level pulse amplitude signal, and polarization division multiplexing OOK signal using the same transmitter. The device is promising for a next-generation intelligent optical link.

Ultrafast single-shot optical vector network analyzer based on coherent time-stretch

Ever-increasing demands for a higher bandwidth of data in the optical communications augment the operating frequency of components and systems. To accelerate the development of these large-bandwidth technologies, there is a growing demand to characterize the frequency response of optical devices in real time. In this work, we report a method to significantly improve the measurement speed of an optical vector network analyzer (OVNA) with coherent time-stretch (CTS). Single-shot frequency spectrum measurements are enabled by time-stretch technology that maps the spectrum of an optical pulse to the time domain. Compared to single-ended detection, the implementation of coherent detection enables the acquiring of accurate phase information of the signal and also provides the digital processed cancellation of dispersion-induced impairments. By utilizing dispersive time-stretch and digital coherent detection techniques, we demonstrate an ultrafast and wide bandwidth OVNA. We successfully characterize its performance by measuring the frequency response of a micro-ring cavity and a silicon Mach–Zehnder interferometer with 0.07-nm spectral resolution and 0.156-rad phase accuracy over 10-nm bandwidth. Meanwhile, the dynamic responses of the magnitude and phase, and the drift of the resonance wavelength of the micro-ring modulator under thermal tuning, were fully recorded by the CTS-OVNA at a 20-MHz frame rate.

A 3-D-Integrated Silicon Photonic Microring-Based 112-Gb/s PAM-4 Transmitter With Nonlinear Equalization and Thermal Control

Microring modulators (MRMs) with CMOS electronics enable compact low power transmitter solutions for 400G Ethernet and co-packaged optical transceivers. In this article, we present a 3-D-integrated 112-Gb/s pulse amplitude modulation (PAM)-4 optical transmitter (OTX) using silicon photonic MRM, on-chip laser, and co-packaged 28-nm CMOS driver. The 3- <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$V_{\mathrm {pp}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> driver includes a lookup table (LUT)-based PAM-4 nonlinear equalizer to address static and dynamic MRM nonlinearities. An integrated thermal control method that is insensitive to input power fluctuations is proposed to compensate for the temperature sensitivity of MRMs. PAM-4 measurement results of our OTX at 112 Gb/s show that transmitter dispersion eye closure quaternary (TDECQ) < 1.5 dB is achieved from 28 °C to 55 °C with 7.4-pJ/bit energy efficiency including on-chip laser.

Ultra-efficient and fully isotropic monolithic microring modulators in a thin-film lithium niobate photonics platform.

The large electro-optic coefficient, r33, of thin-film lithium niobate (LN) on insulator makes it an excellent material platform for high-efficiency optical modulators. Using the fundamental transverse magnetic optical mode in Z-cut LN enables isotropic in-plane devices; however, realizing a strong vertical electric field to capitalize on r33 has been challenging. Here we present a symmetric electrode configuration to boost the vertical field strength inside a fully-etched single-mode LN waveguide. We use this design paradigm to demonstrate an ultra-compact fully isotropic microring modulator with a high electro-optic tuning efficiency of 9 pm/V, extinction ratio of 20 dB, and modulation bandwidth beyond 28 GHz. Under quasi-static operation, the tuning efficiency of the modulator reaches 20 pm/V. Fast, efficient, high-contrast modulation will be critical in future optical communication systems while large quasi-static efficiency will enable post-fabrication trimming, thermal compensation, and even complete reconfiguration of microring-based sensor arrays and photonic integrated circuits.

Self-biasing of carrier depletion based silicon microring modulators.

We report on the self-biasing effect of carrier depletion based silicon microring modulators (MRM) by demonstrating that a silicon MRM can generate open eye diagrams for non-return-to-zero (NRZ) on-off keying (OOK) modulation without an external reverse bias supplied to it. Two modulator configurations are investigated namely single-ended drive in a ground-signal-ground and differential drive in a ground-signal-signal-ground pad configurations. The single-ended modulator is designed with an on photonic integrated circuit (PIC) 50 Ω termination. Open eye diagrams are obtained at 25 Gbit/s and 36 Gbit/s NRZ OOK modulations. We carry-out thorough experimental characterization of the self-biasing of single-ended MRM under various operating conditions of input optical power, carrier wavelength, ring quality factor and extinction ratio as well as modulation speeds, driving voltage swing and pattern length. We demonstrate that the self-biasing is robust and works well in almost all tested conditions. The differential drive MRM is designed with a high impedance without an on-PIC 50 Ω termination. Open eye diagrams are obtained at 30 Gbit/s and 60 Gbit/s NRZ OOK modulations for modulating voltage swing of ∼2.5 Vpp. As demonstrated, the self-biasing works well in both single-ended and differential drive configurations as well as for on-PIC 50 Ω terminated and non-terminated MRMs. The electrical passive parts are all co-designed and fabricated on the same silicon chip as the PIC. The reported self-biasing eliminates the need of having bipolar DC biases supplied to the anode and cathode of the differential drive modulator and allows for simpler driver / modulator interfaces without inductive bias tees.

Theory of Coupled Harmonics and Its Application to Resonant and Non-Resonant Electro-Optic Modulators

We present a unified theory for analyzing the frequency conversion between an RF voltage and an optical carrier in an electro-optic modulator. Our new approach results in the electro-optic coupled harmonic equation (EOCHE) that encompasses the electro-optic behavior of common types of modulators (lumped, traveling wave, and resonant) and effortlessly provides closed-form solutions for the small-signal frequency response and the large-signal intermodulation effects. In particular, the small-signal electro-optic frequency responses of lumped and traveling-wave Mach--Zehnder modulators, and resonant microring modulators are derived. We show that the concept of velocity-mismatch only applies to special cases when designing traveling-wave modulators. Therefore, to generalize the design of electro-optic modulators we propose a universal concept called the “effective RF phase” that governs how the optical power is exchanged between different RF harmonics of light. Using the EOCHE, we also propose a generalization of the widely used transfer matrix method for photonic circuits to fully capture the RF mixing effects in integrated photonic circuits, which is analogous to the steady-state AC analysis of electrical circuits. The simplicity and versatility of our approach make it a holistic tool for designing high-speed electro-optic modulators.

Intra-Datacenter Interconnects With a Serialized Silicon Optical Frequency Comb Modulator

Powerful warehouse-scale datacenters form the fabric of cloud computing. Efficient computing requires intra-datacenter interconnects with large capacity, low energy consumption, and high scalability. These unique goals present brand new scientific and technological challenges for short-reach optical communications. Silicon photonics (SiP) modulators are promising for intra-datacenter interconnects for its low energy consumption, with the superiority of low cost, small footprint, and complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) compatibility. While currently, the main research focus is to increase the modulation speed of a single SiP modulator for a large interconnect capacity, parallel schemes exhibit better scalability. In this article, we propose intra-datacenter interconnects using dense wavelength-division multiplexing (DWDM) techniques with a single SiP optical frequency comb modulator (OFCM) to achieve potential large capacity and high scalability. The SiP-OFCM consists of serially cascaded microring modulators (MRMs). The MRM based SiP-OFCM is intrinsically compatible with DWDM, performing simultaneously data modulation for multiple optical carriers, DWDM demultiplexing and multiplexing functionalities. We demonstrate an interconnect line rate of 400 Gbit/s with a PAM 4 modulation format using the SiP-OFCM. All four DWDM channels exhibit bit-error ratios below the 33% hard-decision forward-error correction threshold after 2-km single-mode fiber transmission.

Silicon photonic subsystem for broadband and RoF detection while enabling carrier reuse.

We experimentally validate a silicon photonic subsystem designed for passive optical networks with carrier reuse. The subsystem is intended for future wavelength division multiplexed (WDM) PONs. It enables radio-over-fiber signals to cohabit an assigned wavelength slot without perturbing the PON signal, while conserving carrier power for the uplink. A microring modulator remodulates the residual carrier for the RoF uplink. We successfully detected the dropped 8GHz broadband signal and five 125 MHz radio-over-fiber signals. Two 125 MHz radio over fiber signals are remodulated onto the carrier. The uplink signal shows good performance, validating the residual downlink signals have been well rejected by the microring filters. The subsystem conserves a clean carrier for remodulation with good signal-to-carrier ratio.

Fundamental electro-optic limitations of thin-film lithium niobate microring modulators

We investigate the impact of waveguide curvature on the electro-optic efficiency of microring resonators in thin-film X-cut or Y-cut lithium niobate (in-plane extraordinary axis) and derive explicit relations on the response. It is shown that such microring modulators have a fundamental upper bound on their electro-optic performance (∼50% filling factor) which corresponds to a specific arrangement of metal electrodes surrounding the microring and yields nearly identical results for X-cut and Y-cut designs. We further show that this limitation does not exist (i.e., 100% filling factor is possible) with Z-cut microring modulators or can be circumvented (i.e., ∼100% filling factor is possible) in X-cut and Y-cut modulators that use a race-track configuration with segmented electrodes. Comparison of our analytical results with multiphysics simulations and measured electro-optic efficiencies of microring resonators in the literature demonstrates the validity and accuracy of our approach.

Microwave power induced resonance shifting of silicon ring modulators for continuously tunable, bandwidth scaled frequency combs.

We demonstrate a technique to continuously tune center frequency and repetition rate of optical frequency combs generated in silicon microring modulators and bandwidth scale them. We utilize a drive frequency dependent, microwave power induced shifting of the microring modulator resonance. In this work, we demonstrate center frequency tunability of frequency combs generated in silicon microring modulators over a wide range (∼8nm) with fixed number of lines. We also demonstrate continuously tunable repetition rates from 7.5GHz to 15GHz. Further, we use this effect to demonstrate a proof-of-principle experiment to bandwidth scale an 8-line (20dB band) comb generated from a single ring modulator driven at 10GHz to a comb with 12 and 15 lines by cascading two and three ring modulators, respectively. This is accomplished by merging widely spaced ring modulator resonances to a common location, thus coupling light simultaneously into multiple cascaded ring modulators.

A Circuit-Level Implementation of Voltage-Tuning Scheme for Realizing Optical PAM-4 Using Three-Segment Microring Modulator

Silicon Photonics, as one of the solutions to satisfy ever-increasing data bandwidth growth, becomes more challenging due to the latest technologies such as Internet of Things (IoT). Higher order pulse amplitude modulation (PAM) schemes is one of the answers to push towards higher data transmission in the presence of bandwidth limited optical devices. In this paper, we have implemented a circuit-level PAM-4 transmitter design based on the voltage-tuning scheme for realizing optical PAM-4 using a three-segment microring modulator. Simulation results based on the extracted layout using TSMC 65nm LP technology and IMEC-ePIXfab SiPhotonics ISIPP50G technology show that our proposed circuit-level transmitter structure is able to achieve PAM-4 data rate of 25-Gb/s with extinction ratio of 9dB and PAM-4 energy efficiency of 0.5pJ/bit. The results also verify that the scheme is able to achieve high tuning flexibility, but the proposed transmitter will consume more power as a result.

Performance evaluation of microring modulator based two-circular 16QAM modulator under amplitude spontaneous emission noise

We propose a silicon microring modulator based two-circular quadrature amplitude modulation (16QAM). We have numerically analyzed the error performance using Voronoi diagram and compared it with the simulation results under back-to-back condition using optical band-pass filter (OBPF) before the receiver having 3-dB bandwidth of 30%, 40%, and 50% of symbol rate, respectively. The result shows 1 dB difference between each case of OBPF bandwidth and 0.5 dB difference between theoretical and simulated value.