A 30 Gb/s CMOS driver integrated with silicon photonics MZM

Abstract

A voltage mode modulator driver is proposed in the TSMC 65nm low power CMOS process. In the electrical testing, the driver itself can achieve a bit rate of 40Gb/s with the single-ended output swing of 1.65V. Unlike equivalent CML modulator drivers, when the proposed driver is integrated with the silicon photonic MZM, it does not require an additional biasing network. The integrated electro-optic transmitter can achieve 30Gb/s with an extinction ratio of 4.05dB, with the power consumption of main driver being 323mW.