Optical clock recovery circuits using traveling-wave electroabsorption modulator-based ring oscillators for 3R regeneration

We describe an optical clock recovery circuit that employs a traveling-wave electroabsorption modulator-based ring oscillator. This approach provides synchronized optical clock and the original optical data signal from the same output at separate wavelengths, eliminating additional timing adjustments for the subsequent nonlinear decision gate for reamplifying, reshaping, and retiming (3R) regeneration. Furthermore, additional retiming and lateral reshaping of the original data signal can be realized along with optical clock recovery by synchronized modulation. We present a general model of jitter transfer and locking dynamics for the clock recovery circuit and compare with experimental results. Theoretical results indicate that by using hybrid integration to shorten the cavity length, nanosecond-order locking time can be achieved, which is critical for a variety of applications such as protection switching, optical burst and optical packet switching. Experimental demonstrations of 40-Gb/s optical clock recovery and its application for optical 3R regeneration are presented. The recovered 40-GHz optical clock has 500-fs timing jitter and 8-ps pulsewidth, and within 0.3 μs locking time. 3R experiment is implemented by using the OCR combined with a subsequent regenerative wavelength converter, which provides vertical reshaping function. 3R regeneration is demonstrated with a reduced timing jitter.