Optical module
An integrated apparatus with optical/electrical interfaces and protocol converter on a single silicon substrate. The apparatus includes an optical module comprising one or more modulators respectively coupled with one or more laser devices for producing a first optical signal to an optical interface and one or more photodetectors for detecting a second optical signal from the optical interface to generate a current signal. Additionally, the apparatus includes a transmit lane module coupled between the optical module and an electrical interface to receive a first electric signal from the electrical interface and provide a framing protocol for driving the one or more modulators. Furthermore, the apparatus includes a receive lane module coupled between the optical module and the electrical interface to process the current signal to send a second electric signal to the electrical interface.
1. An integrated communication apparatus comprising:
a DMUX device configured to receive an incoming optical signal with at least 4 multiplexed wavelengths to get at least 4 de-multiplexed signals;
multiple photo-detectors to convert the de-multiplexed signals to current signals;
a receive lane module for processing the current signals, the receive lane module comprising a digital signal processor (DSP);
a transmit lane module for generating electrical signals, the transmit lane module comprising a forward error correction device (FEC) and encoder;
one or more DFB laser devices for producing laser signals based on the electrical signals, the DFB laser devices being characterized by a relative intensity noise (RIN) level of less than −140 dB/Hz;
one or more optical modulators configured to modulate the laser signals to generate modulated optical signals; and
a MUX device configured to multiplex the modulated optical signals and to output a multiplexed optical signal;
wherein the receive lane module further comprises a transimpedance amplifier (TIA) for amplifying the current signals, an analog-to-digital converter (ADC) for converting the current signals to digital signals, the digital signal processor (DSP) for processing the digital signals, and a Tx clock and data recovery device (Tx-CDR) to remove jitter within the digital signals before transmitting to Ethernet.
2. The integrated communication apparatus of claim 1 wherein the DEMUX device comprises one or more silicon-based delay-line interferometers (DLIs), each DLI being configured to interleave the incoming optical signal from one fiber into two waveguides each with a de-multiplexed signal in different wavelength.
3. The integrated communication apparatus of claim 1 wherein the multiple photo-detectors are configured to respectively convert the at least 4 de-multiplexed signals with different wavelengths.
4. The integrated communication apparatus of claim 1 wherein the at least 4 de-multiplexed wavelengths comprise a predetermined channel spacing selected from 50 GHz or 100 GHz.
5. The integrated communication apparatus of claim 1 wherein the ADC and the DSP are PAM-N enabled encoding format, selecting from PAM4, PAM8, or PAM16, or NRZ encoding format.
6. The integrated communication apparatus of claim 1 wherein the transmit lane module further comprises a receiving Rx-CDR and a driver (DRV).
7. The integrated communication apparatus of claim 6 wherein the driver (DRV) is using PAM-N or NRZ enabled encoding format to control the one or more DFB laser devices and the one or more optical modulators.
8. The integrated communication apparatus of claim 7 wherein the one or more optical modulators comprise silicon-based Mach Zehnder linear segmented modulator.
9. The integrated communication apparatus of claim 8 wherein the silicon-based Mach Zehnder modulator operates in a carrier depletion mode.
10. The integrated communication apparatus of claim 7 wherein the one or more optical modulators comprise a distributed configuration driven by the driver comprising a parallel array of a plurality of amplifiers, each of which is optimized with a PAM encoder to drive a single segment of a modulator.
11. The integrated communication apparatus of claim 1 wherein the MUX device comprises one or more DLIs, each DLI being a 2-to-1 power combiner.
12. The integrated communication apparatus of claim 1 further comprises a control module comprising power supplies, a microcontroller, and ASIC chips.
13. The integrated communication apparatus of claim 1 further comprises an electrical interface.
14. The integrated communication apparatus of claim 13 wherein the electrical interface is configured with 4×10 G/bits Quad Small Form-factor Pluggable (QSFP) compact, hot-pluggable format.
15. The integrated communication apparatus of claim 1 wherein the one or more DFB laser devices are configured to be stabilized with a thermoelectric cooler.
16. The integrated communication apparatus of claim 1 further comprising an optical amplifier and a dispersion compensation module for retaining data integrity of the multiplexed optical signal.
17. An integrated communication apparatus for 100 Gb/s data rate system comprising:
a DMUX device configured to interleave an incoming optical signal from a single fiber to two lights respectively with two channel wavelengths;
a dual PIN photo detector for separately detecting the two lights and respectively convert to two current signals;
a receive lane module comprising a dual linear TIA and dual PAM-enabled ADC/DSP device for processing the two current signals and generating corresponding digital signals;
a transmit lane module comprising a dual PAM driver to generate electrical signals;
two DFB laser devices for producing two laser signals with two wavelengths based on the electrical signals, the DFB laser devices being characterized by a relative intensity noise (RIN) level of less than −140 dB/Hz;
a dual optical modulator comprising a PAM encoder configured to modulate the two laser signals to generate two modulated optical signals; and
a MUX device configured to combine the two modulated optical signals to one output signal into an output fiber.
18. The integrated communication apparatus of claim 17 further comprising an electrical interface configured to provide a data signal in 4×25 G CAUI-4 format based on which the dual PAM driver generates the electrical signals.
19. The integrated communication apparatus of claim 17 wherein the transmit lane module is implemented with 28.125 GBaud PAM4 encoding for 100 Gbit/s data rate optical transmission over one of 4 CWDM channels or 40 DWDM channels with 100 GHz spacing.