Modelling and Analysis of a Plus-Shaped PN Junction Phase Shifter for Data Centre Applications

Abstract

Scaling up of photonic devices is the current research of interest to meet the alarming demand growth in the data centres. The efficiency of the modulator is determined by the performance of the phase shifter. In this paper, a plus-shaped PN junction phase shifter is designed and analysed. This design improved the modulation efficiency and reduced optical loss for high-speed data operation. The width of the P doped region and thickness of thedoped regions in the slabs are varied to obtain high modulation efficiency. The circuit-level simulation analysis was performed on the proposed phase shifterimported in a travelling wave electrode silicon Mach Zehnder modulator. At 80 Gbps, a maximum extinction ratio of 12.39 dB with a bit error rate of 8.67×10-8 was obtained at VπLπ of 1.05 V.cm for the length of the phase shifter of 3.5 mm. The calculated intrinsic 3 dB bandwidth is ~38 GHz and the energy per bit transmission is 1.71pJ/bit.Further analysis was performed to identify the maximum communication distance supported by this proposed phase shifter design in the silicon Mach Zehnder modulator for the data centre requirements.