Design Considerations for Traveling-Wave Modulator-Based CMOS Photonic Transmitters

Systematic design and simulation methodology for hybrid optical transmitters that combine CMOS circuits in a 130-nm process and a traveling-wave Mach-Zehnder modulator (TWMZM) in a 130-nm silicon-on-insulator CMOS process is presented. A compact Verilog-A model for the TWMZM is adopted for the electrooptical simulation. A bond wire model using a high-frequency solver is included for accurate package simulation. The transmitter post-layout simulation result exhibits 5.48-dB extinction ratio, 9.6-ps peak-to-peak jitter, and the best power efficiency of 5.81 pJ/bit when operating up to 12.5-Gb/s non-return-to-zero data. A pulse-amplitude modulation four-level transmitter with a detailed linearity design procedure is presented, which has horizontal and vertical eye openings of 49 ps and 203 μW when operating at 25 Gb/s, and has power efficiency is 5.09 pJ/bit.