Coherent transceiver development at imec: design, process, fabrication and system integration - duo presentation (13')

Coherent transceivers are the pinnacle of optical communications technology: through a combination of integrated photonics, high-speed electronics and sophisticated digital signal processing algorithms, the amplitude, phase and polarization of optical carriers can be modulated to transport unprecedented amounts of data. Industry roadmaps are already calling for multiple Terabit/s per wavelength capacities. At imec, research is on-going across the entire stack from process and fabrication to design and system integration of coherent transceivers aiming at baud rates beyond 100Gbaud. In this presentation, initial building blocks such as high-speed modulators, detectors, hybrid mixers and polarization rotators realized, using imec’s iSiPP Silicon Photonics platform will be highlighted. Our vision on integrating and designing customized lasers combined with wavelength locking features will be discussed. Last, but not least, ultra-high-speed linear SiGe BiCMOS front-end electronics and wireline data converters using scaled CMOS will be addressed.