Design and Performance Evaluation of Multi-Gb/s Silicon Photonics Transmitters for High Energy Physics

Abstract

Optical links are rapidly becoming pervasive in the readout chains of particle physics detector systems. Silicon photonics (SiPh) stands as an attractive candidate to sustain the radiation levels foreseen in the next-generation experiments, while guaranteeing, at the same time, multi-Gb/s and energy-efficient data transmission. Integrated electronic drivers are needed to enable SiPh modulators’ deployment in compact on-detector front-end modules. A current-mode logic-based driver harnessing a pseudo-differential output stage is proposed in this work to drive different types of SiPh devices by means of the same circuit topology. The proposed driver, realized in a 65 nm bulk technology and already tested to behave properly up to an 8 MGy total ionizing dose, is hybridly integrated in this work with a lumped-element Mach–Zehnder modulator (MZM) and a ring modulator (RM), both fabricated in a 130 nm silicon-on-insulator (SOI) process. Bit-error-rate (BER) performances confirm the applicability of the selected architecture to either differential and single-ended loads. A 5 Gb/s data rate, in line with the current high energy physics requirements, is achieved in the RM case, while a packaging-related performance degradation is captured in the MZM-based system, confirming the importance of interconnection modeling.

Compact silicon photonic Mach-Zehnder modulators for high-energy physics

“…effects and efficacy of the implemented countermeasures, fully-integrated SiPh-based transceivers (TRXs) prototypes are already under development to provide next-generation readout systems for high-energy physics (HEP) detectors [16][17][18][19][20]. In comparison to existing optoelectronic modules, SiPh also presents a distinct advantage in terms of transmission capabilities.…”

Design and Characterization of 10 Gb/s and 1 Grad TID-Tolerant Optical Modulator Driver

“…Considering the modulation speed required by the application and the footprint of the devices to be driven, it is sufficient to consider the MZM as a lumped device Concerning the driver design, the pn-junction of the optical modulator can thus be modelled as a series impedance made of a capacitance to represents the depletion region and a resistive contribution associated with the pn-junction access paths (see Fig. 1 bottom-right detail) [35]- [38]. Considering the targeted MZM device, we used C MZM = 500 fF and R MZM = 1.8 for the model.…”