Short-reach Optical Interconnects Research Articles

Single wavelength MDM-PDM 800-Gb/s net data rate transmission over a standard multimode fiber employing a Kramers-Kronig receiver.

We propose a high-speed multimode fiber short-reach optical interconnect system based on a Kramers-Kronig (KK) field reconstruction with the mode division multiplexing (MDM) and polarization division multiplexing (PDM) technology. In this work, the LP01, LP21a, LP21b, and LP02 modes are selected as independent channels to carry information. The demonstration achieved the 800 Gb/s net data rate per wavelength with a bit-rate-distance-product (BDP) of 8 Tb/s·km. To the best of our knowledge, this is the highest experimental record of a single wavelength BDP over the SMMF with KK detection. In addition, we discuss the system performance after all multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) and partial MIMO processing and give guidance on the trade-off between system performance and computational resource.

Adaptive-memory-length look-up table (LUT)-based digital pre-distortion for IM/DD underwater wireless optical communications.

A digital pre-distortion (DPD) scheme based on an adaptive-memory-length look-up table (AML-LUT) is proposed and experimentally demonstrated in a four-level pulse amplitude modulation (4-PAM) underwater optical wireless communication (UOWC) system. By implementing adaptive memory length for each pattern in the AML-LUT-based DPD, the size of the AML-LUT can be significantly reduced without sacrificing performance compared to both the full-size LUT and the multi-symbol simplified look-up table (MSS-LUT)-based DPDs. The performance of the proposed AML-LUT-based DPD is experimentally evaluated for a 625 Mbit/s 4-PAM UOWC over 1 m transmission length. Experimental results show that compared with the full-size LUT with a memory length of 7 (LUT-7)-based DPD, the proposed AML-LUT-based DPD (i) incurs a marginal power penalty of 0.5 dB at both the 7% hard-decision forward error correction (HD-FEC) and KP4-FEC threshold limits, while simultaneously reducing the implementation complexity (i.e., the LUT size) by 93%; (ii) achieves comparable transmission performance compared to the MSS-LUT-based DPD, while reducing the implementation complexity by 89%; and (iii) shows great potential for high-speed, low-complexity and memory-efficient intensity modulation and direct detection (IM/DD) UOWC and short-reach optical interconnects.

Ultra-Bend-Resistant 4-Core Simplex Cable Used for Short-Reach Dense Spatial Division Multiplexing Optical Transmission.

We optimized and fabricated an ultra-bend-resistant 4-core simplex cable (SXC) employing 4-core multicore fiber (MCF) suitable for short-reach dense spatial division multiplexing (DSDM) optical transmission in the O-band. The characteristics of transmission loss, macro-bending and cross-talk (XT) between adjacent cores after cabling were firstly clarified. By introducing the trapezoid index and optimizing the cabling process, the maximum values of added XT of 1.17 dB/km due to 10 loops with a bending radius of 6 mm imposed over the 4-core SXC and a macro-bending loss of 0.37 dB/10 turns were, respectively, achieved.P Then, the optical transmission with low bit error rate (BER) was presented using a 100GBASE-LR4 transceiver over the 1.2 km long 4-core SXC. The excellent bending resistance of the 4-core SXC may pave the way for a reduction in space pressure and increase in access density on short-reach optical interconnect (OI) based on DSDM.

Silica micro-rod resonator-based Kerr frequency comb for high-speed short-reach optical interconnects.

Conventional data center interconnects rely on power-hungry arrays of discrete wavelength laser sources. However, growing bandwidth demand severely challenges ensuring the power and spectral efficiency toward which data center interconnects tend to strive. Kerr frequency combs based on silica microresonators can replace multiple laser arrays, easing the pressure on data center interconnect infrastructure. Therefore, we experimentally demonstrate a bit rate of up to 100 Gbps/λ employing 4-level pulse amplitude modulated signal transmission over a 2 km long short-reach optical interconnect that can be considered a record using any Kerr frequency comb light source, specifically based on a silica micro-rod. In addition, data transmission using the non-return to zero on-off keying modulation format is demonstrated to achieve 60 Gbps/λ. The silica micro-rod resonator-based Kerr frequency comb light source generates an optical frequency comb in the optical C-band with 90 GHz spacing between optical carriers. Data transmission is supported by frequency domain pre-equalization techniques to compensate amplitude-frequency distortions and limited bandwidths of electrical system components. Additionally, achievable results are enhanced with offline digital signal processing, implementing post-equalization using feed-forward and feedback taps.

Compact and scalable polarimetric self-coherent receiver using a dielectric metasurface

Polarimetric self-coherent systems using direct-detection-based Stokes-vector receivers (SVRs) are a promising technology to meet both the cost and capacity requirements of short-reach optical interconnects. However, conventional SVRs require a number of optical components to detect the state of polarization at high speed, resulting in substantially more complicated receiver configurations compared with the current intensity-modulation–direct-detection counterparts. Here, we demonstrate a simple and compact polarimetric self-coherent receiver based on a thin dielectric metasurface and a photodetector array (PDA). With a single 1.05-µm-thick metasurface device fabricated on a compact silicon-on-quartz chip, we implement functionalities of all the necessary passive components, including a 1×3 splitter, three polarization beam splitters with different polarization bases, and six focusing lenses. Combined with a high-speed PDA, we demonstrate self-coherent transmission of 20-GBd 16-ary quadrature amplitude modulation and 50-GBd quadrature phase-shift keying signals over a 25-km single-mode fiber. Owing to the surface-normal configuration, it can easily be scaled to receive spatially multiplexed channels from a multicore fiber or a fiber bundle, enabling compact and low-cost receiver modules for future highly parallelized self-coherent systems.

2.4-Tb/s/λ*km fundamental mode transmission over OM2 fiber employing Kramers-Kronig receiver.

We propose a digital-carrier Kramers-Kronig (DC-KK) scheme based high-speed multimode fiber short-reach optical interconnect system with fundamental mode transmission. After optimization of the parameters, including the roll-off factor of the root-raised-cosine (RRC) filter, and the guard interval (GI) between signal and carrier tone, as well as the carrier signal power ratio (CSPR), 200-Gb/s 32-quadrature amplitude modulation (32QAM) signal transmission over 12-km OM2 fiber has been experimentally demonstrated with a bit error ratio (BER) below the soft-decision forward error correction (SD-FEC) threshold of 4 × 10-2. To the best of our knowledge, this is the highest experimental record of single lambda bitrate-distance-product (SLBDP) achieved by direct-detection (DD)-based transmission over a standard multimode fiber (MMF). The proposed scheme has potential to improve the system performance without replacing massive deployed legacy MMFs for future large-capacity data center interconnects (DCIs).

Ultrahigh-Speed Optical Interconnects With Thin Film Lithium Niobate Modulator

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.

Photonic Integrated Self-Coherent Homodyne Receiver Without Optical Polarization Control for Polarization-Multiplexing Short-Reach Optical Interconnects

Standard coherent communication technology is being introduced to short-reach optical communications to further scale the link throughput by leveraging more degrees of freedom of an optical channel. However, the cost, footprint, and power consumption of the coherent transceivers may impede its application to short-reach optical interconnects. Silicon photonics technology has realized the monolithic integration of various optoelectronic components for coherent transceivers on a single chip to lower the cost but except for a silicon laser. Heterogeneous integration has been developed to realize distributed feedback (DFB) laser sources, which are not well suited for standard coherent communication. Therefore, there is a trade-off between the receiver complexity and the cost of laser sources. Self-coherent homodyne detection as a compromising solution of coherent detection for short-reach applications has been studied to utilize the un-cooled DFB lasers. In this paper, as one realization of self-coherent homodyne detection without optical polarization control, the first integrated complementary polarization-diversity coherent receiver (C-PDCR) chip for addressing the complexity issue has been successfully demonstrated with rapid polarization tracking of remotely delivered local oscillator (LO). To the best of our knowledge, the fastest reported polarization tracking speed is achieved and reaches 9 Mrad/s with negligible performance degradation based on electronic MIMO DSP given the system symbol rate and MIMO coefficients updating conditions/algorithms for a 70-Gbaud dual-polarization (DP) PCS-64QAM signal with 630-Gb/s line rate (net rate 485 Gb/s). The maximal transmission capacity of this on-chip C-PDCR can reach 714 Gb/s (net rate 540 Gb/s over 35 GHz electrical bandwidth).

Nonlinearity-aware PS-PAM-16 transmission for C-band net-300-Gbit/s/λ short-reach optical interconnects with a single DAC.

A nonlinearity-aware signal transmission scheme based on a low-complexity 3rd-order diagonally pruned absolute-term nonlinear equalizer (NLE) with weight sharing (DP-AT-NLE-WS) and rate-adaptable probabilistically shaped 16-level pulse amplitude modulation (PS-PAM-16) signal is proposed and experimentally demonstrated for C-band net-300-Gbit/s/λ short-reach optical interconnects. By replacing the multiplication operation with the absolute operation and applying weight sharing to reduce the kernel redundancy, the computational complexity of the proposed 3rd-order DP-AT-NLE-WS is reduced by >40% compared with the 3rd-order DP-Volterra NLE (DP-VNLE), DP-AT-NLE, and DP-VNLE-WS, with the achieved normalized general mutual information (NGMI) above a threshold of 0.857. Employing a commercial 32-GHz Mach-Zehnder modulator (MZM) and a single digital-to-analog converter (DAC), we demonstrate the single-lane transmission of 100-GBaud PS-PAM-16 signal using DP-AT-NLE-WS in the C band at record 370-Gbit/s line rate and 300.4-Gbit/s net rate over 1-km standard single-mode fiber (SSMF), achieving 21.2% (15.5%) capacity improvement over 100 (105)-GBaud PAM-8 transmission. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first net-300-Gbit/s intensity modulation and direct detection (IM/DD) short-reach transmission in the C band using commercially available components.

Silica Microsphere WGMR-Based Kerr-OFC Light Source and Its Application for High-Speed IM/DD Short-Reach Optical Interconnects

Kerr optical frequency combs (OFCs) based on silica microsphere whispering gallery mode resonator (WGMR) have various applications where they are used as a light source. For telecommunication purposes, WGMR-based Kerr-OFC comb generators can be physically realized using silica microsphere resonators and can be used to replace multiple laser arrays. In such a realization, these novel light sources have the potential to demonstrate an attractive solution for intra-datacenter interconnects (DCI). In this paper, we show an experimental demonstration of a silica microsphere WGMR-based Kerr OFC light source where newly generated 400 GHz spaced carriers together with powerful linear equalization techniques, such as a linear symbol-spaced adaptive decision-feedback equalizer (DFE) with feed-forward (FF) and feedback (FB) taps, provide an alternative to individual lasers ensuring low-cost and low-complexity IM/DD scheme for the transmission of NRZ-OOK modulated signals at data rates up to 50 Gbps/λ over 2 km SMF link. Finally, we demonstrate a record 50 Gbps per λ transmission of NRZ-OOK modulated signals with a novel silica microsphere WGMR-based Kerr-OFC as a light source operating in the optical C-band, surpassing the previously demonstrated data rate record by five times.

Complementary Polarization-Diversity Coherent Receiver for Self-Coherent Homodyne Detection With Rapid Polarization Tracking

There has been renewed interest in coherent detection to provide high spectral efficiency transmission for short-reach optical interconnects. However, the expensive high-stable laser sources may preclude its potential application. To balance the high performance and low cost for short-reach optical networks, the self-coherent homodyne receiver has been investigated, where the dual-polarization (DP) signal and the remote local oscillator (LO) originating from the same laser source co-propagate over a duplex fiber, enabling a remarkable tolerance of laser linewidth. However, the fast evolution of the state of polarization (SOP) of remotely delivered LO becomes problematic for self-coherent homodyne detection systems. To combat the polarization wandering of the remote LO, the complicated adaptive/automatic polarization controller (APC) has been deployed with only up to a few hundred rad/s polarization tracking speed. In this paper, we propose a complementary polarization-diversity coherent receiver (C-PDCR) for self-coherent homodyne detection using remote LO. The proposed C-PDCR features rapid polarization tracking for remote LO utilizing electronic digital signal processing (DSP). The robustness of the proposed C-PDCR is verified and demonstrated with a 1.08-Tb/s line rate (net rate 769.4 Gb/s over 45-GHz electrical bandwidth) using DP PCS-256QAM signal under rapid polarization rotation rate up to 314 krad/s in the experiment, which is more than 3-orders improvement of magnitude compared to the prior reports.

A 56-Gb/s Reconfigurable Silicon-Photonics Transmitter Using High-Swing Distributed Driver and 2-Tap In-Segment Feed-Forward Equalizer in 65-nm CMOS

This article presents a reconfigurable silicon- photonics transmitter (TX) for short-reach optical interconnects. The proposed hybrid-integrated TX combines a 65-nm CMOS driver with a 180-nm SOI-CMOS silicon-photonic Mach-Zehnder Modulator (MZM). The driver integrated with in- segment fractional-UI spaced feed-forward equalizer (FFE) is proposed to support the non-return-zero (NRZ) signaling, electrical- and optical-domain 4-level pulse-amplitude modulation (PAM-4) signaling. The driver employs a reconfigurable distributed topology to achieve high swing, wide bandwidth and flexible operation. The MZM is driven differentially in a push-pull configuration for high modulation efficiency. Measurement results show that the proposed TX operates up to 50-Gb/s NRZ data rate with 4-Vppd swing and 1.92-ps RMS jitter. In the optical PAM-4 mode, it reaches 56-Gb/s data rate and achieves >5-dB extinction ratio (ER) at the cost of 10.9-pJ/bit power efficiency.

FPGA-Implemented Fractal Decoder with Forward Error Correction in Short-Reach Optical Interconnects.

Forward error correction (FEC) codes combined with high-order modulator formats, i.e., coded modulation (CM), are essential in optical communication networks to achieve highly efficient and reliable communication. The task of providing additional error control in the design of CM systems with high-performance requirements remains urgent. As an additional control of CM systems, we propose to use indivisible error detection codes based on a positional number system. In this work, we evaluated the indivisible code using the average probability method (APM) for the binary symmetric channel (BSC), which has the simplicity, versatility and reliability of the estimate, which is close to reality. The APM allows for evaluation and compares indivisible codes according to parameters of correct transmission, and detectable and undetectable errors. Indivisible codes allow for the end-to-end (E2E) control of the transmission and processing of information in digital systems and design devices with a regular structure and high speed. This study researched a fractal decoder device for additional error control, implemented in field-programmable gate array (FPGA) software with FEC for short-reach optical interconnects with multilevel pulse amplitude (PAM-M) modulated with Gray code mapping. Indivisible codes with natural redundancy require far fewer hardware costs to develop and implement encoding and decoding devices with a sufficiently high error detection efficiency. We achieved a reduction in hardware costs for a fractal decoder by using the fractal property of the indivisible code from 10% to 30% for different n while receiving the reciprocal of the golden ratio.

Low-crosstalk laser-direct-writing FI/FO device for 8×100-Gbps optical interconnection.

Fan-in/fan-out (FI/FO) device with low crosstalk is essential for weakly coupled short-reach optical interconnect based on multicore fibers (MCF), for which the laser-direct-writing (LDW) technique is one of the preferred fabrication schemes. In this paper, the influence of FI/FO crosstalk on short-reach intensity-modulation/direction-detection MCF optical interconnection is firstly evaluated, and the crosstalk related to different refractive-index profiles of waveguides and misalignment is analyzed for LDW-FI/FO devices. Then low-crosstalk compact LDW-FI/FO devices matching 8-core MCF are fabricated, adopting multiple-scan method for waveguides with a flat-top refractive-index profile and aberration correction method for precise alignment. Owing to the low crosstalk, 8×100-Gbps optical interconnection over 10-km MCF is experimentally demonstrated with only 0.5-dB penalty compared to 10-km G.652D single-mode fiber transmission. Simulation results indicate that the transmission reach can be further extended to over 40 km. The proposed prototype system with low crosstalk is promising for high-speed optical interconnection applications.

Low-Complexity Multi-Task Learning Aided Neural Networks for Equalization in Short-Reach Optical Interconnects

With the rapid development of machine learning technologies in recent years, different types of neural network (NN)-based equalizers have been proposed and proved to be efficient digital signal processing tools to deal with the nonlinear impairments in short-reach direct detection optical interconnects. However, one major concern for these NN-based equalizers is their computational complexity (CC), since only a few tens of multiplications per symbol can be practically handled considering real-time implementation. In this paper, we propose an NN-based multi-symbol equalization scheme inspired by multi-task learning. Compared with traditional single-output NN-based equalizers, the CC can be significantly reduced with the help of the proposed scheme. A 50-Gb/s 25-km pulse amplitude modulation (PAM)-4 direct detection optical link is experimentally carried out and 3 different types of NNs, i.e., feedforward NN (FNN), cascade FNN (C-FNN), and recurrent NN (RNN), are employed for the proposed multi-symbol equalization scheme. Experimental results show that a maximum CC reduction of 43.2%/41.1%/44.0% can be achieved with FNN/C-FNN/RNN-based multi-symbol equalization to achieve their best performance, compared with the corresponding single-output NNs. The best performance of the proposed and the traditional FNN/C-FNN-based schemes are the same, while the RNN-based scheme sacrifices a slight system performance. Aided by multi-symbol equalization, the CC needed to recover 1 symbol for various NNs can all be reduced to about a few tens of multiplications, indicating the feasibility of real-time implementation of these NN-based equalizers.

Hidden-layers Extended Recurrent Neural Network Equalizer for Short Reach Optical Interconnects

Hidden-layers Extended Recurrent Neural Network Equalizer for Short Reach Optical Interconnects

Hollow-Core NANF for High-Speed Short-Reach Transmission in the S+C+L-Bands

Hollow-core fibers offer a range of beneficial properties for high-speed optical communication applications, including low latency, low chromatic dispersion and nonlinearity. Based on a system employing a ∼5-km span of hollow-core nested antiresonant nodeless fiber (NANF), we demonstrate in this paper, penalty-free Nyquist 4-ary pulse amplitude modulation transmission relative to the back-to-back at 80, 100 and 112 Gb/s over the S+C+L-bands. Furthermore, using multi-carrier direct-detection optical orthogonal frequency division multiplexing, we show that compared to a standard single-mode fiber of a similar length, the NANF exhibits a significantly better bit error rate (BER) performance at 1550 nm and offers more than 20% capacity enhancement. Consequently, up to 138.09-Gb/s capacity has been achieved at a BER threshold of 3.8 × 10 <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">−3</sup> after ∼5-km transmission. We conclude that the use of NANF offers a promising solution for achieving simultaneously high capacity and low latency in future short-reach optical interconnects.

High-throughput hardware deployment of pruned neural network based nonlinear equalization for 100-Gbps short-reach optical interconnect.

Hardware implementation of neural network based nonlinear equalizers will encounter tremendous challenges due to a high-throughput data stream and high computational complexity for 100-Gbps short-reach optical interconnects. In this Letter, we propose a parallel pruned neural network equalizer for high-throughput signal processing and minimized hardware resources. The structure of a time-interleaved neural network equalizer with a delay module is deployed in a field programmable gate array with advanced pruned algorithms, demonstrating significant bit error rate reduction for 100-Gbps real-time throughput with 200 parallel channels. Moreover, the dependence of processing throughput, hardware resources, and equalization performance is investigated, showing that over 50% resource reduction without performance degradation can be achieved with the pruning strategy.

Dispersion-tolerant 200-Gb/s OTDM-PAM4 system using a simple phase-alternating pulse generator

We propose to implement a simple 2-channel optical-time-division multiplexed (OTDM) system based on a phase-alternating pulse generator for a short-reach optical interconnects. The inserted pulse generator consisting of a phase modulator and an optical periodic filter can generate the optical pulse of which the repetition rate is double the frequency of the input electrical clock. The phase-alternating property of the pulse makes the OTDM signal robust to the chromatic dispersion. In the experiment, we optimize the optical pulse, use it for generating the 200-Gb/s OTDM signal operating in the 4-level pulse-amplitude modulated format, and transmit the signal over the 1.9-km standard single-mode fiber.

Fiber Vector Eigenmode Multiplexing Based High Capacity Transmission Over 5-km FMF With Kramers-Kronig Receiver

Vector modes (VMs) with spatially nonhomogeneous polarization patterns, combining polarization and spatial-mode degrees of freedom together, are regarded as the eigenmodes of optical fiber. Such eigenmodes have potential to be used to implement the high capacity spatial division multiplexing (SDM)/mode division multiplexing (MDM) based optical fiber communication systems. Here, we respectively demonstrate 2 VMs of the same order (l = +2, EH11o and EH11e modes) and 2 VMs of different orders (l = 0, HE11o mode and l = +2, EH11e mode) multiplexing transmissions over 5-km few-mode fiber (FMF). The mode crosstalk after FMF transmission has been minimized to prepare high capacity signal transmission without multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) digital signal processing (DSP). To increase the transmission capacity and decrease the system cost, the Kramers-Kronig (KK) receiver has been employed and the single-wavelength two sets of eigenmodes multiplexed 360 Gbit/s and 400 Gbit/s signal transmissions over 5-km FMF link are realized, respectively. Then, to further burst the transmission capacity, 2 vector-mode-division-multiplexing channels (HE11o and EH11e modes) in combination of 5 wavelength-division-multiplexing (WDM) channels with a total of 10 parallel channels have been demonstrated. A total data rate of 1.12 Tbit/s with 28 GBaud 16-state quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) signal has been realized over the 5-km FMF. In all data-carrying experimental demonstrations, the bit-error rate (BER) performance of each VM channel is below the 7% hard decision forward error correction threshold (FEC) at BER of 3.8 × 10 <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">-3</sup> . The experimental results highlight that the VMDM-based optical transmission technology could find enormous potential in huge-capacity short-reach optical interconnects.