Integrated 100 Gb/s Transmitter

The objective of this proposal is to demonstrate an integrated tunable transmitter chip which will overcome size and power roadblocks for transceivers at 100 Gb/s datarates and enable the bandwidth of Department of Energy (DOE) operated networks to continue to increase at the historic rate of 10x every four years. Current optical transmitter solutions are composed of discrete components which are relatively large and consume too much power for meeting or scaling to the bandwidth needs of advanced communications networks. Aurrions approach is to integrate all the optical components into a single semiconductor chip, enabling small form factor, low power transceivers with bandwidths of 100Gb/s and higher. The overall goal of this project is to design, fabricate, and test a 100 Gb/s coherent transmitter chip which can satisfy the OIF 100G standard and is compatible with small form factor pluggable module packaging which enable higher performance networks. In phase I, Aurrion used established modeling and design tools to validate the performance of key photonic component and circuit designs with respect to key performance metrics derived from the OIF 100G standard. Performance simulations and initial circuit layouts indicate that designs are sufficient for meeting key metrics. Phase II is focused on demonstrating the photonic components and circuits necessary to demonstrate a 100 Gb/s coherent transmitter that is compatible with the OIF 100G standard and capable of insertion into a small form factor pluggable module. Package design, optical link simulations, and experimental data will be used to assess the feasibility of commercializing Aurrions heterogeneous photonic integrate circuits (PICs) in a packaged 100 Gb/s coherent transceiver module.Commercial Applications and Benefits: If successful, the technology developed under this program will be used in telecom metro networks and datacenter communications networks. It is anticipated that the inherent size advantage that such a photonic chip would have over discrete optics solutions that exist in the marketplace would allow for much tighter integration through the use of much smaller pluggable modules and thereby enable higher performance networks.