Wideband and Channel Switchable Mode Division Multiplexing (MDM) Optical Power Divider Supporting 7.682 Tbit/s for On-Chip Optical Interconnects
Tun-Yao Hung,
Guan-Hong Chen,
Yuan-Zeng Lin,
Chi-Wai Chow,
Yin-He Jian,
Pin-Cheng Kuo,
Ching-Wei Peng,
Jui-Feng Tsai,
Yang Liu,
Chien-Hung Yeh
Affiliations
Tun-Yao Hung
Department of Photonics & Graduate Institute of Electro-Optical Engineering, College of Electrical and Computer Engineering, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu 30010, Taiwan
Guan-Hong Chen
Department of Photonics & Graduate Institute of Electro-Optical Engineering, College of Electrical and Computer Engineering, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu 30010, Taiwan
Yuan-Zeng Lin
Department of Photonics & Graduate Institute of Electro-Optical Engineering, College of Electrical and Computer Engineering, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu 30010, Taiwan
Chi-Wai Chow
Department of Photonics & Graduate Institute of Electro-Optical Engineering, College of Electrical and Computer Engineering, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu 30010, Taiwan
Yin-He Jian
Department of Photonics & Graduate Institute of Electro-Optical Engineering, College of Electrical and Computer Engineering, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu 30010, Taiwan
Pin-Cheng Kuo
Department of Photonics & Graduate Institute of Electro-Optical Engineering, College of Electrical and Computer Engineering, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu 30010, Taiwan
Ching-Wei Peng
Department of Photonics & Graduate Institute of Electro-Optical Engineering, College of Electrical and Computer Engineering, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu 30010, Taiwan
Jui-Feng Tsai
Department of Photonics & Graduate Institute of Electro-Optical Engineering, College of Electrical and Computer Engineering, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu 30010, Taiwan
Yang Liu
Philips Electronics Ltd., N.T., Hong Kong
Chien-Hung Yeh
Department of Photonics, Feng Chia University, Taichung 40724, Taiwan
Silicon photonics (SiPh) are considered a promising technology for increasing interconnect speed and capacity while decreasing power consumption. Mode division multiplexing (MDM) enables signals to be transmitted in different orthogonal modes in a single waveguide core. Wideband MDM components simultaneously supporting wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) and orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) can significantly increase the transmission capacity for optical interconnects. In this work, we propose, fabricate and demonstrate a wideband and channel switchable MDM optical power divider on an SOI platform, supporting single, dual and triple modes. The switchable MDM power divider consists of two parts. The first part is a cascaded Mach–Zehnder interferometer (MZI) for switching the data from their original TE0, TE1 and TE2 modes to different modes among themselves. After the target modes are identified, mode up-conversion and Y-branch are utilized in the second part for the MDM power division. Here, 48 WDM wavelength channels carrying OFDM data are successfully switched and power divided. An aggregated capacity of 7.682 Tbit/s is achieved, satisfying the pre-forward error correction (pre-FEC) threshold (bit-error-rate, BER = 3.8 × 10−3). Although up to three MDM modes are presented in the proof-of-concept demonstration here, the proposed scheme can be scaled to higher order modes operation.
