Abstract

Segmenting a silicon modulator can substantially increase its electro-optic bandwidth without sacrificing modulation efficiency. We demonstrate a segmented silicon IQ modulator and experimentally explore both modulator design and operating point to optimize systems trade-offs in coherent detection. An electro-optic bandwidth of greater than 40 GHz is measured for a 4-mm-long segment, and greater than 60 GHz for a 2-mm-long segment. We evaluate optical transmission experimentally at 120 Gbaud for 16-ary quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) and 32QAM. The segments are operated in tandem with identical data at each segment. We present an experimental method to align data timing between the segments. Through the optimization of segment biasing and linear compensation, we have achieved a bit error rate (BER) of 16QAM well below the 20% forward error correction (FEC) threshold ( $2\times 10^{-2}$ ). Adding nonlinear pre-compensation allows for 32QAM with a BER below the 24% FEC threshold ( $4.5\times 10^{-2}$ ), enabling a net rate of 483 Gbs per polarization. The modulator can also be operated as an optical digital analogy converter for complex optical signal generation, for which 100 Gbs is achieved for a proof of concept.

Single-carrier 72 GBaud 32QAM and 84 GBaud 16QAM transmission using a SiP IQ modulator with joint digital-optical pre-compensation

Jiachuan Lin, Hassan Sepehrian, Leslie A. Rusch, and Wei Shi
Opt. Express 27(4) 5610-5619 (2019)

120-GBaud 16-QAM silicon photonics IQ modulator for data center interconnection

Jian Wang, Mustafa Al-Qadi, Wen-Jr Jiang, Kangmei Li, You-Wei Chen, Konstantin Kuzmin, Calvin Ho, Yan Yang Zhao, Hiroaki Yamada, Jason Ackert, David Dougherty, Weilin Liu, Chengkun Chen, Yifeng Zhou, Ping Wang, Xu Liu, Kevin Schmidt, Jocelyn Nee, Kenneth A. McGreer, Marcel Boudreau, Jibin Sun, Winston I. Way, and Hui Xu
Opt. Express 31(16) 25515-25526 (2023)

Experimental comparison of direct detection Nyquist SSB transmission based on silicon dual-drive and IQ Mach-Zehnder modulators with electrical packaging

Xiaoke Ruan, Ke Li, David J Thomson, Cosimo Lacava, Fanfan Meng, Iosif Demirtzioglou, Periklis Petropoulos, Yixiao Zhu, Graham T Reed, and Fan Zhang
Opt. Express 25(16) 19332-19342 (2017)

PDM-16QAM transmission of 135 GBaud enabled by 120 GSa/s DAC and Tomlinson–Harashima pre-coding

Guoxiu Huang, Hisao Nakashima, and Takeshi Hoshida
Opt. Lett. 46(18) 4518-4521 (2021)

Reduced-size lookup tables enabling higher-order QAM with all-silicon IQ modulators

Sasan Zhalehpour, Jiachuan Lin, Wei Shi, and Leslie A. Rusch
Opt. Express 27(17) 24243-24259 (2019)