Monolithic Silicon Photonic Integrated Circuits for Compact 100+Gb/s Coherent Optical Receivers and Transmitters

We present silicon photonic integrated circuits (PICs) based coherent optical transmitters and receivers for high-speed long-distance fiber optical transmission. High-degree photonic integration is achieved by monolithically integrating silicon electrooptic modulators, germanium photo detectors, silicon nitride-assisted on-chip polarization rotators, thermal phase shifters, and various passive silicon optical devices on a single wafer platform. We demonstrate the use of these PICs for modulating and detecting 112-Gb/s polarization-division-multiplexed quadrature phase-shift keying (PDM-QPSK) and 224-Gb/s PDM 16-ary quadrature amplitude modulation (PDM-16-QAM) signals. Transmission and coherent detection of a 112-Gb/s PDM-QPSK signal over 2560-km standard single-mode fiber is also demonstrated. The high-degree photonic integration for silicon PICs promises small-form-factor and low-power-consumption transceivers for future coherent systems that demand high cost efficiency and energy efficiency.