SILICON PHOTONICS MULTICARRIER OPTICAL TRANSCEIVER

• US 20140153931A1
• Filed: 05/14/2013
• Published: 06/05/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 05/14/2012
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Acacia Technology, Inc. (Cisco Systems, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Acacia Communications Incorporated (Cisco Systems, Inc.)
• Inventors: DOERR, Christopher
• Granted Patent: US 10,009,106 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 398/135
• CPC Class Codes: H04B 10/40 Transceivers
• CPC Class Codes: H04B 10/505 using external modulation
• CPC Class Codes: H04B 10/506 Multiwavelength transmitters
• CPC Class Codes: H04B 10/541 Digital intensity or amplitude modulation
• CPC Class Codes: H04B 10/556 Digital modulation, e.g. differential phase shift keying [DPSK] or frequency shift keying [FSK]
• CPC Class Codes: H04B 10/60 Receivers

Abstract

Disclosed herein are techniques, methods, structures and apparatus that provide a silicon photonics multicarrier optical transceiver wherein both the transmitter and receiver are integrated on a single silicon chip and which generates a plurality of carriers through the effect of an on-chip modulator, amplifies the optical power of the carriers through the effect of an off-chip amplifier, and generates M orthogonal sets of carriers through the effect of an on-chip basis former.

Claims

1. A multicarrier coherent optical transceiver comprising:

a single silicon substrate having integrated thereon a transmitter and a receiver, said transmitter comprising;

an on-chip phase modulator that receives as input an optical signal from an optical signal source, generates N carriers, and directs the N carriers to an off-chip optical amplifier;

an on-chip basis former that receives as input amplified N carriers from the off-chip optical amplifier and generates M orthogonal sets of carriers; and

a number of modulators each receiving as input a particular one of the generated M orthogonal carriers and modulating the received carrier with data to generate a modulated output; and

a power combiner for combining the modulated outputs of the modulators into a transmitter output signal; and

said receiver comprising;

a polarization splitter and rotator that receives a multicarrier input signal and applies a split input signal to a plurality of hybrids;

the plurality of hybrids optically connected to the basis former;

wherein the off-chip optical amplifier is not integrated into the single silicon substrate.

2. The multicarrier coherent optical transceiver of claim 1 wherein the on-chip basis former is a wavelength demultiplexer.

3. The multicarrier coherent optical transceiver of claim 1 wherein the on-chip basis former comprises a 1×

M power splitter including M waveguides of linearly increasing path length.

4. The multicarrier coherent optical transceiver of claim 3 wherein the path-length difference between the M waveguides is defined by c/(fn_gM) where c is the speed of light in a vacuum and n_g is the waveguide group index and f is the frequency at which the phase modulator is driven sinusoidally.

5. The multicarrier coherent optical transceiver of claim 4 wherein the basis former comprises a plurality of individual basis formers.

6. The multicarrier coherent optical transceiver of claim 5 wherein the basis sets of carriers operate as both inputs to the modulators in the transmitter and local oscillators in the receiver.

7. A multicarrier coherent optical transceiver comprising a single silicon substrate having integrated thereon both a transmitter and a receiver wherein a plurality of carriers are generated through the effect of a phase modulator integrated on the silicon substrate;

the plurality of carriers are amplified through the effect of an optical amplifier not integrated onto the single silicon substrate; and

the optically amplified carriers are separated into one or more orthogonal sets of carriers by one or more basis formers integrated on the silicon substrate.

8. The multicarrier coherent optical transceiver of claim 7 wherein the basis former is one selected from the group consisting of:

a wavelength demultiplexer and a power splitter connected to a parallel array of delay lines.

9. The multicarrier coherent optical transceiver of claim 7 wherein the basis former comprises a 1×

M power splitter including M waveguides of linearly increasing path length, wherein the path-length difference between the M waveguides is defined by c/(fn_gM) where c is the speed of light in a vacuum and n_g is the waveguide group index and f is the frequency at which the phase modulator is driven sinusoidally.