Silicon modulator design using a system-oriented methodology for high-speed data center interconnect PAM-4 applications

Abstract A Silicon (Si) modulator and a design methodology using a system-oriented numerical approach are proposed. The main contributions of this work are to provide a Silicon modulator as an alternative solution for intra-data center interconnect (DCI) applications and a single figure-of-merit (FOM) for the modulator design, which takes as input the main device parameters (modulation efficiency ( V π × L ), optical loss, and electro-optical bandwidth ( f 3 d B )) and provides a global optical system optimization. By using a numerical approach, the modulator physical parameters are analyzed according to system performance metrics such as the required receiver sensitivity to reach a target bit error rate (BER), and the required transmitter launch power. A capacitive Silicon device and a 4-level pulse amplitude modulation (PAM-4) system simulator is presented. The results show an efficient modulator ( V π = 3.5 V ) with high bandwidth ( f 3 d B > 38 GHz ), which is promising for data centers solutions, where power consumption is critical and high-speed is required.