Low power all-digital radio-over-fiber transmission for 28-GHz band using parallel electro-absorption modulators

We present a low-power all-digital radio-over-fiber (RoF) transmitter for the 28 GHz band using sigma-delta modulation. Using a parallel electro-absorption modulator (EAM) structure, the radio signal upconversion is split between the electrical and the optical domains. This halves the maximum bandwidth requirement of the driver circuit with respect to conventional implementations. Furthermore, the effect of chromatic dispersion can be mitigated by tuning the optical phase and amplitude applied to the individual modulators, such that transmission notches are partially removed. The modulator structure is described using simplified models and verified in VPI TransmissionMaker. Experimental results using a 140 mW non-return-to-zero (NRZ) driver and parallel EAMs are provided and yield an error vector magnitude (EVM) of 7.6% (5.2%) when transporting a radio signal modulated at 28 GHz with 5.25 Gb/s (2.625 Gb/s) 64-QAM over 10 km standard single mode fiber (SSMF) at 1560 nm

SiGe EAM-based transceivers for datacenter interconnects and radio over fiber

Silicon photonics is a key-enabling technology leveraging decades of effort and infrastructure of the microelectronics CMOS industry resulting in high yield, low cost and potential high volume manufacturing. Furthermore, due to the high index contrast of the platform, very compact, high-complexity photonic integrated circuits can be devised. To benefit from these advantages, high-speed modulators should also be compatible with silicon technology. In this respect, SiGe electro-absorption modulators (EAM) are considered as a promising candidate since they are CMOS-compatible and offer high-speed, compact, low-loss and low-power modulation. In this paper, we discuss SiGe EAM-based transceivers for next-generation datacenter interconnects (DCI) and radio-over-fiber (RoF) fronthaul in next-generation cellular networks