Communication applications in silicon waveguides

Abstract

The adoption of silicon photonic technology in optical communication networks is now a commercial reality, with silicon transceiver products being incorporated into data centres. Photonic circuits fabricated on the Silicon-on-Insulator (SOI) platform enjoy the benefit of design scalability, by leveraging the immense infrastructure of the microelectronics industry that offers high production yield at low cost. This PhD project was aimed at investigating and developing a number of integrated components that perform key functionalities in communications. In particular, the reported devices cover chipto-fibre grating couplers, electro-optic modulators and nonlinear waveguide elements, which are studied in various stages of their development cycle. The first component reported in this thesis is a novel silicon grating coupler device that was simulated and fabricated in order to operate as a mode order converter. Coupling of the fundamental waveguide mode to a higher-order Linearly Polarised (LP11) mode of a commercial two-mode fibre is successfully demonstrated to verify its operation. The second topic that is investigated relates to electro-optic silicon modulators and their capabilities in two different applications. First, an analytic model is developed for the behaviour of a Ring Resonator Modulator (RRM) as a frequency comb generator and the concept is experimentally implemented on a fabricated device that produces a five-line comb. The second device that is studied is a linear Mach–Zehnder Modulator (MZM) that is characterised and used for data transmission in medium-reach links using Pulse Amplitude Modulation and Discrete Multitone formats (PAM-4 and DMT), while improvements of the topology in terms of linearity are theoretically studied. The last topic of this thesis relates to the application of nonlinear silicon waveguides in all-optical signal processing. Wavelength conversion of a complex optical signal through Four-Wave Mixing in such a structure is demonstrated, while an improved design for an integrated wavelength converter device is proposed.

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Identifiers

ORCID for Iosif Demirtzioglou: orcid.org/0000-0003-3048-1768

ORCID for Periklis Petropoulos: orcid.org/0000-0002-1576-8034

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