Parallel wavelength-division-multiplexed signal transmission and dispersion compensation enabled by soliton microcombs and microrings

Yuanbin Liu; Hongyi Zhang; Jiacheng Liu; Liangjun Lu; Jiangbing Du; Yu Li; Zuyuan He; Jianping Chen; Linjie Zhou; Andrew W. Poon

doi:10.1038/s41467-024-47904-2

Nature Communications (Apr 2024)

Parallel wavelength-division-multiplexed signal transmission and dispersion compensation enabled by soliton microcombs and microrings

Yuanbin Liu,
Hongyi Zhang,
Jiacheng Liu,
Liangjun Lu,
Jiangbing Du,
Yu Li,
Zuyuan He,
Jianping Chen,
Linjie Zhou,
Andrew W. Poon

Affiliations

Yuanbin Liu: State Key Laboratory of Advanced Optical Communication Systems and Networks, Department of Electronic Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University
Hongyi Zhang: State Key Laboratory of Advanced Optical Communication Systems and Networks, Department of Electronic Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University
Jiacheng Liu: State Key Laboratory of Advanced Optical Communication Systems and Networks, Department of Electronic Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University
Liangjun Lu: State Key Laboratory of Advanced Optical Communication Systems and Networks, Department of Electronic Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University
Jiangbing Du: State Key Laboratory of Advanced Optical Communication Systems and Networks, Department of Electronic Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University
Yu Li: State Key Laboratory of Advanced Optical Communication Systems and Networks, Department of Electronic Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University
Zuyuan He: State Key Laboratory of Advanced Optical Communication Systems and Networks, Department of Electronic Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University
Jianping Chen: State Key Laboratory of Advanced Optical Communication Systems and Networks, Department of Electronic Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University
Linjie Zhou: State Key Laboratory of Advanced Optical Communication Systems and Networks, Department of Electronic Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University
Andrew W. Poon: Photonic Device Laboratory, Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-47904-2
Journal volume & issue: Vol. 15, no. 1
pp. 1 – 12

Abstract

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Abstract The proliferation of computation-intensive technologies has led to a significant rise in the number of datacenters, posing challenges for high-speed and power-efficient datacenter interconnects (DCIs). Although inter-DCIs based on intensity modulation and direct detection (IM-DD) along with wavelength-division multiplexing technologies exhibit power-efficient and large-capacity properties, the requirement of multiple laser sources leads to high costs and limited scalability, and the chromatic dispersion (CD) restricts the transmission length of optical signals. Here we propose a scalable on-chip parallel IM-DD data transmission system enabled by a single-soliton Kerr microcomb and a reconfigurable microring resonator-based CD compensator. We experimentally demonstrate an aggregate line rate of 1.68 Tbit/s over a 20-km-long SMF. The extrapolated energy consumption for CD compensation of 40-km-SMFs is ~0.3 pJ/bit, which is calculated as being around 6 times less than that of the commercial 400G-ZR coherent transceivers. Our approach holds significant promise for achieving data rates exceeding 10 terabits.

Published in Nature Communications

ISSN: 2041-1723 (Online)
Publisher: Nature Portfolio
Country of publisher: United Kingdom
LCC subjects: Science
Website: https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

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