title: First demonstration of long-haul transmission using silicon microring modulators.
abstract: We report error-free long-haul transmission of optical data modulated using a silicon microring resonator electro-optic modulator with modulation rates up to 12.5 Gb/s. Using bit-error-rate and power penalty characterizations, we evaluate the performance of this device with varying modulation rates, and perform a comparative analysis using a commercial electro-optic modulator. We then experimentally measure the signal integrity degradation of the high-speed optical data with increasing propagation distances, induced chromatic dispersions, and bandwidth-distance products, showing error-free transmission for propagation distances up to 80 km. These results confirm the functional ubiquity of this silicon modulator, establishing the potential role of silicon photonic interconnects for chip-scale high-performance computing systems and memory access networks, optically-interconnected data centers, as well as high-performance telecommunication networks spanning large distances.
authors: Department of Electrical Engineering, Columbia University, New York, New York, USA. biberman@ee.columbia.edu
authors: Aleksandr
authors: A
authors: Biberman
authors: Sasikanth
authors: S
authors: Manipatruni
authors: Noam
authors: N
authors: Ophir
authors: Long
authors: L
authors: Chen
authors: Michal
authors: M
authors: Lipson
authors: Keren
authors: K
authors: Bergman