8-channel WDM silicon photonics transceiver with SOA and semiconductor mode-locked laser

We demonstrate an integrated 8 by 14 Gbps dense wavelength division multiplexed silicon photonics transceiver that makes use of an external mode-locked laser as a light source and a single semiconductor optical amplifier for post-modulation signal amplification. Remaining components necessary for modulation, filtering and (de‑)multiplexing are monolithically integrated in a single chip. In all system experiments, all eight channels are jointly operated with independent data streams in order to include impairments arising out of nonlinear effects inside the SOA while benchmarking the system performance. The transmitter, measured with a commercial reference receiver, supports on-off keying data transmission with an uncorrected BER ranging between 1e-5 and 5e-7 for all channels in back-to-back configuration and between 8e-4 and 1e-5 after 10 km transmission (both PRBS 2³¹-1). The three best channels of the full link consisting in the silicon photonics transmitter operated with the silicon photonics receiver in back-to-back configuration maintain a BER better than the targeted 5e-5. Based on link budget modeling, we expect this target to be reached for all 8 channels pending improvement of the receiver offset compensation loop.