Silicon-based electro-optic modulators for linear and nonlinear radio-over-fiber applications

Author

Gutierrez, A.M. ; Galan, J.V. ; Herrera, Javier ; Brimont, Antoine ; Aamer, M. ; Marti, Joan ; Marris-Morini, D. ; Vivien, L. ; Fedeli, Jean-Marc ; Thomson, David J. ; Gardes, Frederic Y. ; Reed, Graham T. ; Sanchis, Pablo

Author_Institution

Nanophotonics Technol. Center, Univ. Politec. de Valencia, Valencia, Spain

fYear

2012

fDate

11-14 Sept. 2012

Firstpage

168

Lastpage

171

Abstract

The potential of silicon-based electro-optic modulators for enabling high performance radio-over-fiber applications is demonstrated. Two different applications taking advantage of the linear and nonlinear regime of silicon modulators are investigated. A ring-assisted Mach-Zehnder modulator (MZM) is firstly investigated for RF analog transmission. QPSK and 16-QAM electrical signals are modulated on a 1 GHz RF carrier with an error vector magnitude lower than 10% for a symbol rate of 20Msymbols/s. A MZM enhanced via slow-light propagation is secondly investigated for photonic mixing applications. A 10Msymbol/s QPSK signal at 1GHz RF frequency is successfully up-converted to 10.25GHz with low conversion losses ~7dB.

Keywords

electro-optical modulation; elemental semiconductors; quadrature phase shift keying; radio-over-fibre; silicon; 16-QAM electrical signals; MZM; QPSK signal; RF analog transmission; RF carrier; Si; error vector magnitude; frequency 1 GHz; frequency 10.25 GHz; high performance radio-over-fiber applications; linear radio-over-fiber applications; nonlinear radio-over-fiber applications; photonic mixing applications; ring-assisted Mach-Zehnder modulator; silicon-based electro-optic modulators; slow-light propagation; Electrooptic modulators; Frequency modulation; Phase shift keying; Photonics; Radio frequency; Silicon; Integrated photonics; photonic mixing; silicon modulator;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Microwave Photonics (MWP), 2012 International Topical Meeting on

Conference_Location

Noordwijk

Print_ISBN

978-1-4673-2863-0

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/MWP.2012.6474083

Filename

6474083