High-speed transceivers for short-reach (few cm to few tens of km) and long-haul optical communication links require high-performance modulators in their transmitter optical subassembly. The focus of our study is to provide a comprehensive review of contemporary (i.e., plasma dispersion modulators) and new modulator implementations that involve the integration of novel materials with SiPh.

They promise to extend the performance beyond the limits set by the physical properties of silicon.

These modulators are in the early years of their development. Recent years have seen a paradigm shift where the integration of various electro-refractive and electro-absorptive materials has opened up additional routes toward performant SiPh modulators. The high-speed plasma dispersion silicon modulators have been commercially deployed and have demonstrated excellent performance. SiPh has relied on the plasma dispersion effect, either in injection, depletion, or accumulation mode, to demonstrate efficient high-speed modulators. Silicon photonics (SiPh), a photonic integrated circuit technology that leverages the fabrication sophistication of complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor technology, is well-positioned to deliver the performance, price, and manufacturing volume for the high-speed modulators of future optical communication links. The scaling in data speed and span of the optical links demands modulators to be concurrently performant and cost-effective.

Optical links are moving to higher and higher transmission speeds while shrinking to shorter and shorter ranges where optical links are envisaged even at the chip scale.

Qcs 2.38