IEEE Photonics Journal (Jan 2022)

Intra-Data Centre Flexible PAM Transmission System Using an Integrated InP-Si<sub>3</sub>N<sub>4</sub> Dual Laser Module

  • Marcos Troncoso-Costas,
  • Devika Dass,
  • Colm Browning,
  • Francisco J. Diaz-Otero,
  • Chris G. H. Roeloffzen,
  • Liam P. Barry

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1109/JPHOT.2021.3128767
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 14, no. 1
pp. 1 – 6

Abstract

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Flexible Pulse Amplitude Modulation (FlexPAM) consists of the use of non-standard PAM formats, such as PAM-5 or PAM-6, to increase the granularity of the link capacity for a given baud rate. In this paper, we demonstrate FlexPAM systems as a scalable solution for future data center interconnects, introduce a symbol-to-bit mapping that minimizes the effect of intensity noise in the performance of non-power of two number of levels formats, and present experimental and simulation results of an unamplified FlexPAM transmission system over 1 km of single-mode fiber. 20 GBaud transmission was successfully demonstrated experimentally for modulation formats ranging from OOK up to PAM-16 using an integrated InP-Si3N4 laser. In addition, a simulation to closely replicate the experiment was used to determine the system requirements to achieve transmission rates of up to 200 Gbps on a single wavelength, at a baud rate of 53.5 Gbaud with component bandwidth limitations of 30 GHz.

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