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Silicon photonic Mach Zehnder modulators for next-generation short-reach optical communication networks

Silicon photonic Mach Zehnder modulators for next-generation short-reach optical communication networks
Silicon photonic Mach Zehnder modulators for next-generation short-reach optical communication networks
Communication traffic grows relentlessly in today’s networks, and with ever more machines connected to the network, this trend is set to continue for the foreseeable future. It is widely accepted that increasingly faster communications are required at the point of the end users, and consequently optical transmission plays a progressively greater role even in short- and medium-reach networks. Silicon photonic technologies are becoming increasingly attractive for such networks, due to their potential for low cost, energetically efficient, high-speed optical components. A representative example is the silicon-based optical modulator, which has been actively studied. Researchers have demonstrated silicon modulators in different types of structures, such as ring resonators or slow light based devices. These approaches have shown remarkably good performance in terms of modulation efficiency, however their operation could be severely affected by temperature drifts or fabrication errors. Mach-Zehnder modulators (MZM), on the other hand, show good performance and resilience to different environmental conditions. In this paper we present a CMOS-compatible compact silicon MZM. We study the application of the modulator to short-reach interconnects by realizing data modulation using some relevant advanced modulation formats, such as 4-level Pulse Amplitude Modulation (PAM-4) and Discrete Multi-Tone (DMT) modulation and compare the performance of the different systems in transmission.
Lacava, Cosimo
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Liu, Zhixin
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Thomson, Dave
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Fédéli, Jean Marc
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Richardson, David
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Reed, Graham T.
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Petropoulos, Periklis
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Lacava, Cosimo
a0a31a27-23ac-4a73-8bb4-2f02368fb8bd
Liu, Zhixin
01f60f1d-54b7-4c19-b3f3-9550f9d77733
Thomson, Dave
17c1626c-2422-42c6-98e0-586ae220bcda
Fédéli, Jean Marc
dfd01829-9a9a-4157-b9fe-aafa1a3d00e9
Richardson, David
ebfe1ff9-d0c2-4e52-b7ae-c1b13bccdef3
Reed, Graham T.
ca08dd60-c072-4d7d-b254-75714d570139
Petropoulos, Periklis
522b02cc-9f3f-468e-bca5-e9f58cc9cad7

Lacava, Cosimo, Liu, Zhixin, Thomson, Dave, Fédéli, Jean Marc, Richardson, David, Reed, Graham T. and Petropoulos, Periklis (2016) Silicon photonic Mach Zehnder modulators for next-generation short-reach optical communication networks. Photonics West 2016, , San Francisco, United States. 16 - 18 Feb 2016. (doi:10.1117/12.2211330).

Record type: Conference or Workshop Item (Other)

Abstract

Communication traffic grows relentlessly in today’s networks, and with ever more machines connected to the network, this trend is set to continue for the foreseeable future. It is widely accepted that increasingly faster communications are required at the point of the end users, and consequently optical transmission plays a progressively greater role even in short- and medium-reach networks. Silicon photonic technologies are becoming increasingly attractive for such networks, due to their potential for low cost, energetically efficient, high-speed optical components. A representative example is the silicon-based optical modulator, which has been actively studied. Researchers have demonstrated silicon modulators in different types of structures, such as ring resonators or slow light based devices. These approaches have shown remarkably good performance in terms of modulation efficiency, however their operation could be severely affected by temperature drifts or fabrication errors. Mach-Zehnder modulators (MZM), on the other hand, show good performance and resilience to different environmental conditions. In this paper we present a CMOS-compatible compact silicon MZM. We study the application of the modulator to short-reach interconnects by realizing data modulation using some relevant advanced modulation formats, such as 4-level Pulse Amplitude Modulation (PAM-4) and Discrete Multi-Tone (DMT) modulation and compare the performance of the different systems in transmission.

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More information

Published date: 16 February 2016
Venue - Dates: Photonics West 2016, , San Francisco, United States, 2016-02-16 - 2016-02-18
Organisations: Optoelectronics Research Centre

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 389483
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/389483
PURE UUID: 7d1f69ed-1a72-4f36-be2a-09c22fda091d
ORCID for Cosimo Lacava: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-9950-8642
ORCID for David Richardson: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-7751-1058
ORCID for Periklis Petropoulos: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-1576-8034

Catalogue record

Date deposited: 15 Mar 2016 12:57
Last modified: 15 Mar 2024 02:57

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Contributors

Author: Cosimo Lacava ORCID iD
Author: Zhixin Liu
Author: Dave Thomson
Author: Jean Marc Fédéli
Author: Graham T. Reed

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