Analysis and Experimental Study of a Silicon Photonic Single MRM-Assisted MZI PAM-4 Modulator

Rui Li; David Patel; Alireza Samani; Eslam El-Fiky; Yun Wang; Zhenping Xing; Luhua Xu; David V. Plant

doi:10.1109/JPHOT.2017.2774763

IEEE Photonics Journal (Jan 2017)

Analysis and Experimental Study of a Silicon Photonic Single MRM-Assisted MZI PAM-4 Modulator

Rui Li,
David Patel,
Alireza Samani,
Eslam El-Fiky,
Yun Wang,
Zhenping Xing,
Luhua Xu,
David V. Plant

Affiliations

Rui Li: ORCiD; Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, McGill University, Montréal, QC, Canada
David Patel: Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, McGill University, Montréal, QC, Canada
Alireza Samani: ORCiD; Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, McGill University, Montréal, QC, Canada
Eslam El-Fiky: ORCiD; Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, McGill University, Montréal, QC, Canada
Yun Wang: ORCiD; Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, McGill University, Montréal, QC, Canada
Zhenping Xing: ORCiD; Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, McGill University, Montréal, QC, Canada
Luhua Xu: ORCiD; Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, McGill University, Montréal, QC, Canada
David V. Plant: Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, McGill University, Montréal, QC, Canada

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/JPHOT.2017.2774763
Journal volume & issue: Vol. 9, no. 6
pp. 1 – 7

Abstract

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We report on the analysis and experimental study of a silicon photonic single microring modulator (MRM) assisted Mach-Zehnder interferometer for high-speed four-level pulse amplitude modulation (PAM-4). The static extinction ratio (ER) of the proposed device is 18 dB larger than that of a single MRM with the same design parameters. Under 0 V reverse bias voltage, the measured 3-dB electro-optic bandwidth of the device is 20 GHz. Based on the enhancement of the ER, the measured 40 Gb/s on-off keying eye diagram of the device shows larger modulation amplitude than that of the single MRM. We further present 76 Gb/s PAM-4 using the proposed device in a back-to-back configuration, with the measured bit error rate below the hard-decision forward error correction threshold of 3.8 × 10-3.

Published in IEEE Photonics Journal

ISSN: 1943-0655 (Online)
Publisher: IEEE
Country of publisher: United States
LCC subjects: Technology: Engineering (General). Civil engineering (General): Applied optics. Photonics; Science: Physics: Optics. Light
Website: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/RecentIssue.jsp?punumber=4563994

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