High-Q Microring Resonator with Narrow Free Spectral Range for Pulse Repetition Rate Multiplication

Optical time division multiplexer on silicon chip

“…Our approach has the distinct advantage that inherently slow modulators operating at the same bit-rate as the input pulse train (i.e., 5 Gb/s) can be used to achieve very high overall bit-rates at a single wavelength. This is unlike a previous demonstration of a pulse rate multiplexer based on a silicon ring resonator where it would be impossible to modulate individual bit-positions without very high-speed modulators [10]. While the size of our device is large, the total path length difference at a 5 Gb/s input rate is approximately ~12 mm; with further improvements in slow light photonic structures and 3-D integration it will be possible to shrink the size of our OTDM significantly [15][16][17][18]21].…”

“…Since the modulators are likely to use on-chip electronic drivers, this channel bit-rate will likely be limited to no more than 10Gbit/s, thus requiring many precisely tuned wavelength channels to reach aggregated high data rates. In order to achieve significantly higher data rates in each channel, here we propose and demonstrate a simple scheme for time-multiplexing optical data [7][8][9][10] to high data rates from several slowly modulated paths. In the following sections, we explain the operation principle of our device and demonstrate the simple generation of 20 Gb/s and 40 Gb/s from a 5 Gb/s input using our optical time-division multiplexer.…”