High extinction ratio of silicon photonics Mach–Zehnder IQ-modulators with wide optical bandwidth through power compensation

Abstract

The growing demand for global communication services necessitates high bandwidth interconnects. With a gradual maturity in the spectral efficiency (SE) growth, extending optical bandwidth beyond the C + L-band is crucial for future optical network upgrades. Silicon photonics (SiPh) technology has already been practically implemented in short-reach optical interconnects and coherent communication links, due to the advantages in size, cost, and power consumption. Despite its commercial success, achieving a high extinction ratio (ER) with wide optical bandwidth in the volume production poses difficulties. In this paper, a power compensation method is proposed and investigated theoretically and experimentally. Compared to the convention method, our algorithm is still robust in a large range of extinction ratio from 10 dB to 45 dB, when the other child Mach–Zehnder modulator (MZM) is non-ideal and other noise exists. The new ER compensation method will be very useful in wide optical bandwidth transceivers.