Integrated silicon reconfigurable optical transmitter

We demonstrate an integrated silicon reconfigurable optical transmitter based on the reconfigurability of the Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI). By incorporating modulators into the tunable MZI structure and manipulating the operation states, different modulation formats, including amplitude/phase modulated binary/quaternary signals, as well as polarization multiplexed signals, can be generated as required, to accommodate different transmission links. For a proof-of-concept demonstration, the microring modulators are adopted, and we experimentally generate a 10 GBaud on-off keying (OOK) signal, four-level pulse amplitude signal, and polarization division multiplexing OOK signal using the same transmitter. The device is promising for a next-generation intelligent optical link.