Wavelength conversion of 28 GBaud 16-QAM signals based on four-wave mixing in a silicon nanowire

Abstract

We demonstrate error-free wavelength conversion of 28 GBaud 16-QAM single polarization (112 Gb/s) signals based on four-wave mixing in a dispersion engineered silicon nanowire (SNW). Wavelength conversion covering the entire C-band is achieved using a single pump. We characterize the performance of the wavelength converter subsystem through the electrical signal to noise ratio penalty as well as the bit error rate of the converted signal as a function of input signal power. Moreover, we evaluate the degradation of the optical signal to noise ratio due to wavelength conversion in the SNW.

Ultra-Compact Amorphous Silicon Waveguide for Wavelength Conversion

“…Table I shows the normalized efficiency for four different devices already presented in the literature. Crystalline Silicon waveguides (on a SiO2 substrate) have been widely used in the past as wavelength converters; as an example in [11] authors show a successful conversion of 28 Gbaud 16 QAM signal using a pump power of 24 dBm. Taking into account the length of this device a 0.055 % W −2 mm −2 normalized efficiency is obtained showing that this waveguide still requires a relatively high power and relatively large footprint in order to be operated as wavelength converter.…”

Wavelength conversion of complex modulation formats in a compact SiGe waveguide

“…the use of complex modulation formats that lead to a more efficient use of the available bandwidth. Quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) formats, such as 16-QAM and 64-QAM, have received increasing interest recently [2][3][4][5], since they allow for a more efficient use of the optical spectrum than the more widely adopted formats of on-off keying (OOK), differential phase-shift keying (DPSK) and quadrature phase-shift keying (QPSK). However, the transmission and processing of QAM signals present a significant challenge.…”

“…Nonlinear silicon devices have recently emerged as promising candidates for implementing all-optical signal processing functions due to the ultra-high χ (3) nonlinearity of silicon and their potential for realizing nonlinear devices with small footprint, high yield and low fabrication costs [8,9]. Indeed, several important applications, including wavelength conversion [3,[10][11][12] and optical regeneration [13,14] have already been demonstrated in systems based on either crystalline silicon, amorphous silicon or silicon germanium.…”

“…Indeed, several important applications, including wavelength conversion [3,[10][11][12] and optical regeneration [13,14] have already been demonstrated in systems based on either crystalline silicon, amorphous silicon or silicon germanium.…”

Low-penalty up to 16-QAM wavelength conversion in a low loss CMOS compatible spiral waveguide

“…Wavelength conversion based on integrated devices has been reported for advanced modulation format such as QPSK [5][6][7], 16-QAM [8,9], and up to 128-QAM orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) [10] using silicon [5,[7][8][9][10] and silicon-germanium [6] waveguides. However, these materials are well known to be limited by nonlinear absorption at telecom wavelengths, and this has motivated the search for other nonlinear material platforms such as AlGaAs [11], silicon nitride [12] and Hydex [13][14][15] that exhibit a much higher nonlinear figureof-merit (FOM) [13].…”