Compatibility of Silicon Mach-Zehnder Modulators for Advanced Modulation Formats

Author

Ke Xu ; Ling-Gang Yang ; Jiun-Yu Sung ; Chen, Y.M. ; Cheng, Z.Z. ; Chi-Wai Chow ; Chien-Hung Yeh ; Hon Ki Tsang

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electron. Eng., Chinese Univ. of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China

Volume

31

Issue

15

fYear

2013

fDate

Aug.1, 2013

Firstpage

2550

Lastpage

2554

Abstract

Silicon photonics which is compatible with mature complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) fabrication process has been extensively demonstrated for monolithic integration of photonic and electrical circuits. We show that an integrated silicon Mach-Zehnder modulator (MZM) may be used for advanced modulation formats despite the nonlinear dependence of refractive index change with applied voltage in the free-carrier depletion modulator. We experimentally demonstrated the use of a silicon MZM for direct detection optical orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (DDO-OFDM) modulation with advanced data formats of quadrature phase-shift keying (QPSK), 8 phase-shift keying (8PSK) and 16-quadrature amplitude modulation (16-QAM). The measured bit error rate performance of the back-to-back and 50 km single mode fiber transmission of each format is well below the forward error correction limit.

Keywords

elemental semiconductors; integrated optics; optical modulation; phase shift keying; quadrature amplitude modulation; refractive index; silicon; Si; distance 50 km; Educational institutions; Optical modulation; Optical waveguides; Phase shift keying; Photonics; Silicon; Advanced modulation; orthogonal frequency division multiplexing; silicon modulator;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Lightwave Technology, Journal of

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0733-8724

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/JLT.2013.2270277

Filename

6544559