Research Of The Technology Of A High-Speed Optical Receiver Based On A Silicon Hotonic PAM-4 Quantizer

As global traffic grows exponentially in recent years,the data transmission capacity of modern communication system is improved continuously,which makes four-level pulse-amplitude modulation(PAM-4)one of the critical signaling techniques to achieve the data rate goal.Due to its low tolerance to noise,a PAM-4 receiver presents new challenges in circuit implementation to achieve the sensitivity and bandwidth target.To overcome this difficulty mentioned above,since silicon optical devices have high bandwidth and low power consumption,this work proposes a new PAM-4 receiver architecture based on a silicon photonic quantizer,and then finishes related link simulation and chip design.Firstly,by improving the conventional optical PAM-4 receiver based on V-shifting amplifiers,this work proposes a novel optical PAM-4 quantizer based on MMI array.Then,based on this novel quantizer,this work proposes an optical PAM-4 receiver design and proves its validity through optical link simulation.According to the simulation results,this novel receiver is able to achieve a maximum communication speed of 70 Gbps,and its sensitivity at 50 Gbps is-6.5d Bm,which prove its leading position among similar designs.Finally,the optical chip in this design is manufactured using imec ISIPP25 G silicon photonic process technology,and an advanced optical testing platform is built up to measure and analyze the performance of it.The testing results prove the feasibility of this novel receiver design.Compared to mainstream PAM-4 receiver designs,our design replaces high-speed ADCs with an optical quantizer based on MMI array,which significantly reduce the complexity and power consumption of receiver circuits.Therefore,our design provides a new idea for future high-speed optical PAM-4 receiver design.