A 22 Gb/s Directly Modulated Optical Injection-Locked Quantum-Dot Microring Laser Transmitter with Integrated CMOS Driver

Yang-Hang Fan, Sudharsanan Srinivasan, Yingtao Hu, Di Liang, Ruida Liu, Ankur Kumar, Erwen Li, Zhihong Huang, Raymond G. Beausoleil, Samuel Palermo

Abstract: High-speed optical interconnects are a promising solution for the rapidly increasing bandwidth density demands in data center and high-performance computing applications. This paper presents a transmitter that consists of a co-packaged optically injection-locked quantum-dot (QD) microring laser and a 28nm CMOS driver. Optical injection locking provides an effective solution to overcome the inherent low modulation bandwidth (≤ 5 GHz) of the QD microring laser. Further bandwidth extension is provided with the driver's asymmetric 2-tap feed-forward equalizer (FFE) that compensates the laser's non-linear optical dynamics. Combining these techniques allows for a record 22Gb/s operation of an O-band quantum-dot laser heterogeneously integrated in a silicon photonic platform.