Segmented Silicon Modulator With a Bandwidth Beyond 67 GHz for High-Speed Signaling
- Resource Type
- Periodical
- Authors
- Mohammadi, A.; Zheng, Z.; Zhang, X.; Rusch, L.A.; Shi, W.
- Source
- Journal of Lightwave Technology J. Lightwave Technol. Lightwave Technology, Journal of. 41(15):5059-5066 Aug, 2023
- Subject
- Communication, Networking and Broadcast Technologies
Photonics and Electrooptics
Bandwidth
Modulation
Optical modulation
Optical losses
Radio frequency
Delays
Adaptive optics
Traveling-wave electrode
Silicon Photonics
Silicon-on-insulator
CMOS compatible
Modulation efficiency
Electro-optic Bandwidth
- Language
- ISSN
- 0733-8724
1558-2213
We demonstrate an all-silicon segmented modulator with traveling-wave electrodes, achieving an electro-optic bandwidth beyond 67 GHz and a $V_\pi$ of 5 V. We show that dividing a long optical modulator into shorter segments can help achieve a higher bandwidth without compromising modulation efficiency or optical loss. We analyze the bandwidth limitation due to the delay mismatch between the driving and optical signals. We show that the impact of misalignment of driving delays between segments on the overall bandwidth of the modulator can be described by a finite impulse response filter. Using this modulator, we achieve optical transmission of 120 Gbaud 8-level amplitude shift keying with coherent detection. Taking into account the forward error correction overhead, this yields 336.4 Gb/s net on a single polarization. Our design has the potential for achieving 1 Tb/s using dual-polarization IQ modulation.