Demonstration of a 17 × 25 Gb/s Heterogeneous III-V/Si DWDM Transmitter Based on (De-) Interleaved Quantum Dot Optical Frequency Combs

Abstract

We discuss the design and demonstration of a space and dense wavelength division multiplexed heterogeneous III-V/Si transmitter based on a single multi-wavelength quantum dot laser source and ultra-power-efficient metal-oxide-semiconductor capacitor (MOSCAP) (de-)interleaver. This paper begins by introducing a transceiver architecture capable of > 1 Tb/s transmission with < 1.5 pJ/bit power consumption, followed by a detailed discussion of the heterogeneous laser source and (de-)interleaver. The O-band quantum dot laser, based on a compound cavity design, has a FSR ∼ 64 GHz with a 1σ variation of ∼ 1.08 GHz and a measured relative intensity noise (RIN) of ∼ -144 dB/Hz for the largest comb peak. The single-ring-assisted asymmetric Mach-Zehnder interferometer (1-RAMZI) MOSCAP (de-)interleaver exhibit cross-talk (XT) levels down to -27 dB for tuning powers of 10.0 nW. Finally, to the best of our knowledge, we have demonstrated for the first time, a simultaneous wavelength and space division multiplexed transmitter fabricated on a heterogeneous III-V-on-silicon platform. Experiments show (de-)interleaved 17 optical comb lines, each modulated at 25 Gb/s non-return-to-zero (NRZ) for an aggregate bandwidth of 425 Gb/s.