First demonstration of long-haul transmission using silicon microring modulators

Abstract

We report error-free long-haul transmission of optical data modulated using a silicon microring resonator electro-optic modulator with modulation rates up to 12.5 Gb/s. Using bit-error-rate and power penalty characterizations, we evaluate the performance of this device with varying modulation rates, and perform a comparative analysis using a commercial electro-optic modulator. We then experimentally measure the signal integrity degradation of the high-speed optical data with increasing propagation distances, induced chromatic dispersions, and bandwidth-distance products, showing error-free transmission for propagation distances up to 80 km. These results confirm the functional ubiquity of this silicon modulator, establishing the potential role of silicon photonic interconnects for chip-scale high-performance computing systems and memory access networks, optically-interconnected data centers, as well as high-performance telecommunication networks spanning large distances.

Applications of Optical Microcavity Resonators in Analytical Chemistry

“…These photonic circuits are most typically fabricated from semiconducting materials and often operate at standard telecommunication wavelengths (4–6). Such devices have many applications beyond the realm of traditional optical sensing, including optical interconnects, signal routing and processing, and long range telecommunications (7–10). Leveraging the ability to precisely and sensitively manipulate light on such small scales, optical resonators are playing an increasingly important role in analytical chemistry, finding applications to a multitude of analyte classes (11–14).…”

10-Gb/s Access Network Architecture Based on Micro-Ring Modulators With Colorless ONU and Mitigated Rayleigh Backscattering

“…Fig. 2(b) and (c) show the scanning-electron-microscope (SEM) image and spectrum of the micro-ring device, further described in [6], [7]. The silicon chip has a fiber-to-fiber loss of 22 dB, with the micro-ring having an extinction of 8 dB.…”

“…The key feature in our proposed optical transceiver is the wavelength selective modulation function, uniquely enabled by the use of cascaded silicon micro-ring modulators [6]. Compact, low-energy silicon micro-ring modulators have been shown to be feasible for medium-and long-haul optical communications [7]. Their compatibility with existing complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) fabrication processes allows them to meet the stringent cost requirements of WDM PON.…”

25Gbit/s fully CMOS-compatible silicon modulator based on interleaved PN junctions

“…After researches in the past ten years, silicon photonics has rapidly grown up as an ideal solution for high bandwidth onchip interconnects [1], energy-efficient telecommunications [2] and low-cost bio-photonics [3]. As the building blocks of the silicon-based information photonics, varies of high performance silicon-based photonic devices with have been successfully developed with the help of CMOS technologies, among which the silicon-based modulator is employed to transfer the driving voltage into optical intensity signal.…”