30.6 A 6V Swing 3.6% THD >40GHz Driver with 4.5× Bandwidth Extension for a 272Gb/s Dual-Polarization 16-QAM Silicon Photonic Transmitter
Traditionally, the high-performance optical coherent communication TX has been a discrete assembly based on LiNbO 3 modulators and III-V drivers. While delivering high bandwidth (BW) and linearity, such a platform is bulky and does not work for high-volume or intra-datacenter applications. Silicon p...
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Published in | 2019 IEEE International Solid- State Circuits Conference - (ISSCC) pp. 484 - 486 |
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Main Authors | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |
Format | Conference Proceeding |
Language | English |
Published |
IEEE
01.02.2019
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Subjects | |
Online Access | Get full text |
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Summary: | Traditionally, the high-performance optical coherent communication TX has been a discrete assembly based on LiNbO 3 modulators and III-V drivers. While delivering high bandwidth (BW) and linearity, such a platform is bulky and does not work for high-volume or intra-datacenter applications. Silicon photonics (SiPh) offers a Si-based platform for next-generation transceivers by integrating all required optical functions. But even in existing SiPH-based commercial modules, the driver generally remains a III-V-based chipset, impeding the path to an all-silicon solution. The challenge for an all-silicon-based coherent optical TX is in the simultaneous requirement of high differential voltage swing (V ppd ), linearity and BW. In this work, we present a 130nmSiGe driver achieving a 6V ppd swing, 3.6% THD and small-signal BW over 40GHz. Co-packaged with a SiPh transceiver, the driver enables the same level of performance as LiNbO 3 modulators with III-V drivers and demonstrates 272Gb/s dual-polarization (DP)-160AM transmission. This is enabled using (1) circuit techniques that achieve a BW extension ratio (BWER) of 4.5\times for the Mach-Zehnder modulator (MZM) driver while simultaneously achieving large swing (\mathrm {V}_{\mathrm {p}\mathrm {p}\mathrm {d}}=6V), high linearity (THD =3.6%) and mitigating breakdown voltage (BV) and reliability concerns with large V ppd ; (2) pre-emphasis control in the driver output stage and gain control in the pre-driver VGA to compensate for the electro-optic (E/0) BW of the TX over corners; and (3) a monolithic integration of MZMs with a polarization rotator (PR) optimized for high-BW, low-crosstalk and co-integration with drivers for DP-OAM and DP-OPSK operation. |
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ISSN: | 2376-8606 |
DOI: | 10.1109/ISSCC.2019.8662318 |