An Energy-Efficient Silicon Microring Resonator-Based Photonic Transmitter Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • 2014 IEEE. Silicon microring resonator-based photonic interconnects offer an attractive substitute to conventional electrical interconnects due to the negligible frequency-dependent channel loss and high bandwidth density offered via wavelength division multiplexing (WDM). This paper presents silicon photonic transmitters employing ring modulators designed in a 130-nm SOI process wire bonded with CMOS drivers in a 1-V standard 65-nm CMOS technology. The transmitter circuits incorporate high-swing 2V and 4V drivers with nonlinear pre-emphasis to bypass the bandwidth limitation of the carrier-injection silicon ring modulator. The first-generation silicon ring modulator wire bonded with 4V CMOS driver achieves 12.7-dB extinction ratio at 5 Gb/s with 4.04-mW power consumption, while the second-generation ring modulator wire bonded with 2V CMOS driver achieves 9.2-dB extinction ratio at 9 Gb/s with 4.32 mW. Both of these measurements exclude the laser power.

published proceedings

  • IEEE Design and Test

author list (cited authors)

  • Li, C., Chen, C., Wang, B., Palermo, S., Fiorentino, M., & Beausoleil, R. G.

citation count

  • 11

complete list of authors

  • Li, Cheng||Chen, Chin-Hui||Wang, Binhao||Palermo, Samuel||Fiorentino, Marco||Beausoleil, Raymond G

publication date

  • October 2014