Transparent Optical-THz-Optical Link at
240/192 Gbit/s over 5/115 m Enabled
by Plasmonics

Abstract

A transparent Optical-subTHz-Optical link providing record-high single line rates of 240 Gbit/s and 192 Gbit/s on a single optical carrier over distances from 5 to 115 m is demonstrated. Besides a direct mapping of the optical to a 230 GHz subTHz-carrier frequency by means of a uni-traveling carrier (UTC) photodiode, we demonstrate direct conversion of data from the subTHz domain back to the optical domain by a plasmonic modulator. It is shown that the subTHz-to-optical upconversion can even be performed at good quality without any electrical amplifiers. Finally, at the receiver, the local oscillator is employed to directly map the optical signal back to the electrical baseband within a coherent receiver.

Transparent Optical-THz-Optical Link at 240/192 Gbit/s over 5/115 m Enabled by Plasmonics

Design and synthesis of chromophores with enhanced electro-optic activities in both bulk and plasmonic–organic hybrid devices

Abstract:

This study demonstrates enhancement of in-device electro-optic activity via a series of theory-inspired organic electro-optic (OEO) chromophores based on strong (diarylamino)phenyl electron donating moieties. These chromophores are tuned to minimize trade-offs between molecular hyperpolarizability and optical loss. Hyper-Rayleigh scattering (HRS) measurements demonstrate that these chromophores, herein described as BAH, show >2-fold improvement in β versus standard chromophores such as JRD1, and approach that of the recent BTP and BAY chromophore families. Electric field poled bulk devices of neat and binary BAH chromophores exhibited significantly enhanced EO coefficients (r33) and poling efficiencies (r33/Ep) compared with state-of-the-art chromophores such as JRD1. The neat BAH13 devices with charge blocking layers produced very large poling efficiencies of 11.6 ± 0.7 nm2 V−2 and maximum r33 value of 1100 ± 100 pm V−1 at 1310 nm on hafnium dioxide (HfO2).

These results were comparable to that of our recently reported BAY1 but with much lower loss (extinction coefficient, k), and greatly exceeding that of other previously reported OEO compounds. 3 : 1 BAH-FD : BAH13 blends showed a poling efficiency of 6.7 ± 0.3 nm2 V−2 and an even greater reduction in k. 1 : 1 BAH-BB : BAH13 showed a higher poling efficiency of 8.4 ± 0.3 nm2 V−2, which is approximately a 2.5-fold enhancement in poling efficiency vs. JRD1. Neat BAH13 was evaluated in plasmonic–organic hybrid (POH) Mach–Zehnder modulators with a phase shifter length of 10 μm and slot widths of 80 and 105 nm. In-device BAH13 achieved a maximum r33 of 208 pm V−1 at 1550 nm, which is ∼1.7 times higher than JRD1 under equivalent conditions.

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Ultra-High-Speed 2:1 Digital Selector and Plasmonic Modulator IM/DD Transmitter Operating at 222 GBaud for Intra-Datacenter Applications

Abstract:

We demonstrate a 222 GBd on-off-keying transmitter in a short-reach intra-datacenter scenario with direct detection after 120 m of standard single mode fiber. The system operates at net-data rates of >200 Gb/s OOK for transmission distances of a few meters, and >177 Gb/s over 120 m, limited by chromatic dispersion in the standard single mode fiber. The high symbol rate transmitter is enabled by a high-bandwidth plasmonic-organic hybrid Mach–Zehnder modulator on the silicon photonic platform that is ribbon-bonded to an InP DHBT 2:1 digital multiplexing selector.

Requiring no driving RF amplifiers, the selector directly drives the modulator with a differential output voltage of 622 mVpp measured across a 50 Ω resistor. The transmitter assembly occupies a footprint of less than 1.5 mm × 2.1 mm.

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100 GBd IM/DD transmission over 14 km SMF in the C-band enabled by a plasmonic SSB MZM

Abstract:

100 Gb/s NRZ-OOK transmission over 14 km standard single mode fiber in the C-band is demonstrated with a simple intensity modulation and direct detection scheme. The transmission concept utilizes single sideband modulation and comprises a single differential digital-to-analog converter with adjustable phase offset, a new dual electrode plasmonic Mach-Zehnder modulator, a laser at 1537.5 nm, standard single mode fibers, a photodiode, an analog-to-digital converter, and linear offline digital signal processing. The presented SSB concept requires no DSP and complex signaling at the transmitter. The demonstrated SSB transmitter increased the possible transmission distance by a factor of 4.6 compared to a DSB transmitter. We also investigated the equalization requirements. A T/2-spaced feedforward equalizer requires 27 taps to achieve transmission over 10 km with a BER below the HD-FEC limit. In comparison to a DSB transmitter, the SSB transmitter reduced the receiver DSP complexity by a factor of 13.7.

© 2020 Optical Society of America under the terms of the OSA Open Access Publishing Agreement

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Transparent Optical-THz-Optical Link Transmission over 5/115 m at 240/190 Gbit/s Enabled by Plasmonics

Abstract:

The first transparent Optical-THz-Optical link providing record-high line-rates up to 240 and 190 Gbit/s over distances from 5 to 115m is demonstrated. The link is based on direct data-conversion from optical to sub-THz and vice-versa.

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