Design of an energy-efficient silicon microring resonator-based photonic transmitter

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 1V standard 65nm CMOS technology. The transmitter circuits incorporate high-swing (2Vpp and 4Vpp) drivers with non-linear pre-emphasis to bypass the bandwidth limitation of the carrier-injection silicon ring modulator. The 1st generation silicon ring modulator wire-bonded with 4Vpp CMOS driver achieves 12.7dB extinction ratio at 5Gb/s with 4.04mW power consumption, while the 2nd generation ring modulator wirebonded with 2Vpp CMOS driver achieves 9.2dB extinction ratio at 9Gb/s with 4.32mW. Both of these measurements exclude the laser power. 2014 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P.

Design of an energy-efficient silicon microring resonator-based photonic transmitter Academic Article