A Silicon Photonic PAM-4 Modulator Based on Dual-Parallel Mach-Zehnder Interferometers

作者：Samani Alireza; Veerasubramanian Venkat; El Fiky Eslam; Patel David; Plant David V

来源：IEEE Photonics Journal, 2016, 8(1): 7800610.

DOI：10.1109/JPHOT.2015.2512105

• Silicon nanophotonics
• electro-optical systems
• microwave photonics signal processing

We present a silicon photonic dual-parallel Mach-Zehnder modulator (MZM) operating near 1550 nm used for four-level pulse amplitude modulation (PAM-4). The differential and integral nonlinearities of the device are investigated. A driving scheme and a biasing method that improves the linearity and PAM operation of the device are presented. The measured second harmonic distortion and two-tone, third-order intermodulation spurious-free dynamic range are 75 dB.Hz(1/2) and 86 dB.Hz(3/2), respectively. We further investigate the performance of the device in a short-reach transmission system. We report a successful 50-Gbaud single-wavelength transmission of PAM-4 over 2 km of single-mode fiber (SMF) below hard decision pre forward error correction (pre-FEC) threshold of 4.4 x 10(-3).

• 出版日期2016-2
• 单位McGill