Linearized Mach-Zehnder Modulators for Microwave Photonic Applications

We demonstrate U-shaped silicon PN junctions for energy efficient Mach-Zehnder modulators and ring modulators in the O-band. This type of junction has an improved modulation efficiency compared to existing PN junction geometries, has low losses, and supports high-speed operation. The U-shaped junctions were fabricated in an 8" silicon photonics platform, and they were incorporated in travelling-wave Mach-Zehnder modulators and microring modulators. For the high-bandwidth Mach-Zehnder modulator, the DC VπL at -0.5 V bias was 4.6 V·mm. It exhibited a 3dB bandwidth of 13 GHz, and eye patterns at up to 24 Gb/s were observed. A VπL as low as ~2.6 V·mm at a -0.5 V bias was measured in another device. The ring modulator tuning efficiency was 40 pm·V-1 between 0 V and -0.5 V bias. It had a 3-dB bandwidth of 13.5 GHz and open eye patterns at up to 13 Gb/s were measured. This type of PN junctions can be easily fabricated without extra masks and can be incorporated into generic silicon photonics platforms.

In this paper the spurious free dynamic range (SFDR) of a current steering digital-to-analog converter (DAC) is related to the process parameters used for its implementation. It is shown that the realization of such DACs in advanced processes provides power and area reduction combined with faster signaling. However, it is very challenging to improve the SFDR at a certain given output swing and sampling frequency. It is demonstrated that the SFDR can be doubled by using an optimized cascode switch. It is also concluded that compared to MOSFET based approaches higher sampling frequencies can be achieved by bipolar transistor based DACs if the SFDR and transition frequency are fixed. The reason is the higher Early voltage of bipolar transistors.

<para xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> Recently, optical phase modulation has been widely used in microwave photonics (MWP) systems, such as radio over fiber systems, photonic microwave filters, optical microwave and millimeter-wave signal generators, and optical subcarrier frequency up-converters. An optical phase-modulated signal can be converted to an intensity-modulated signal in a dispersive optical fiber. Due to the intrinsic nonlinearity of optical phase modulation, for linear applications such as microwave signal distribution and filtering, the modulation index should be kept small to minimize the unwanted modulation nonlinearity. However, for nonlinear applications such as microwave frequency multiplication and subcarrier frequency upconversion, the modulation index should be large to maximize the frequency multiplication and upconversion efficiency. In this paper, for the first time to our knowledge, we develop a thorough theoretical framework for the characterization of phase-modulation-based MWP systems, in which the phase modulation to intensity modulation conversion is realized using a dispersive fiber. Analytical models for the distributions of single-tone and two-tone microwave signals and for microwave frequency multiplication and subcarrier frequency upconversion are developed, which are verified by numerical simulations. The analytical models for single-tone and two-tone transmissions are further confirmed by experiments. The developed analytical models provide an accurate mathematical tool in designing phase-modulation-based MWP systems. </para>

High-power high linearity photodetectors are desirable for applications that require high spurious free dynamic range (SFDR), such as a receive mode antenna employing a photonic link. Both the output third order (OIP3) and output second order intercept point (OIP2) of the photodetector can cause a reduction in SFDR, where OIP3 is of concern for distortion close to the fundamentals [1] and OIP2 for wideband applications [2]. Recently a packaged modified uni-traveling carrier (MUTC) photodetector was demonstrated [3]. Here we analyze those devices from both the RF power performance as well as SFDR performance for narrow and wideband link applications.

A 600-MS/s 6-bit folding and interpolation analog-to digital converter (ADC) is presented. This ADC with single track-and-hold (T/H) circuits is based on cascaded folding amplifiers and input-connection-improved active interpolating amplifiers. Under a supply voltage of 1.4 V, the ADC achieves 5.55 bit of effective number of bits (ENOB) and 47.84 dB of spurious free dynamic range (SFDR) at 10-MHz input and 4.3 bit of ENOB and 35.65 dB of SFDR at 200-MHz input with 500-Ms/s sampling rate and achieves 5.48 bit of ENOB and 43.52 dB of SFDR at 1-MHz input and 4.66 bit of ENOB and 39.56 dB of SFDR at 30.1-MHz input with 600-Ms/s sampling rate. Differential nonlinearity (DNL) and integral nonlinearity (INL) are 0.62 LSB and 0.66 LSB, respectively. The circuit is prototyped in 0.13-µm CMOS process and occupies a core area of 0.17 mm2. The converter only dissipates 25 mW1.

A direct digital frequency synthesizer (DDFS) based on a non-equal division parabolic polynomial interpolation method is proposed in this paper. To attain high spurious free dynamic range (SDRF) and reduce area cost, a parabolic polynomial interpolation method is adopted in the proposed design to replace conventional ROM-based phase-to-sine mapper methods. Particularly, the left 1/4 of the phase range is approximated using a low-curvature parabolic curve. The proposed design is manufactured using a standard 0.18 μm CMOS technology. The maximum output frequency is 50 MHz, the core area is 1.4528 mm <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sup> , and the spurious free dynamic range (SFDR) is 68.67 dBc. The proposed DDFS outperforms prior works' SFDR and energy efficiency.

In this paper, a simple image rejection mixer based on the dispersion effect in the single mode fiber is proposed and experimentally demonstrated for the radio-over-fiber (RoF) system. The key idea is to control the DC bias voltages of the dual parallel Mach-Zehnder modulator (DPMZM) to compensate for the desired components and eliminate the image induced components simultaneously during the fiber transmission. The experimental results show, the image rejection ratio (IRR) of ∼50 dB is realized, and the spurious free dynamic range (SFDR) is about 100.75 dB·Hz2/3. In addition, the results also demonstrate an image-free intermediate frequency (IF) range of 0.5 GHz–9.5 GHz. This image-free mixer can be widely employed in the radio-over-fiber (RoF) system, and greatly simplify the receiver structure in the base station.

A practical, broadband, all-optical linearization concept for a Mach-Zehnder modulator (MZM) is proposed and demonstrated. The unique transmitter design includes an amplitude modulated (AM) standard MZM with two optical outputs, where the alternative (or complimentary) output is combined with the laser carrier to create a linearizing optical local oscillator, which when coherently combined with the AM signal fully cancels 3rd order intermodulation distortion components. Using this scheme, record linearity is achieved for a non-amplified RF photonic link, with spurious free dynamic range (SFDR) of 118.5 dB.Hz2/3 and 123 dB.Hz2/3 for single and dual fiber/photodetector schemes.

Wideband photonic microwave channelization and image-reject down-conversion

This paper proposes a new DDS architecture combined with Nonlinear DAC and Wave-Correction-ROM (WCR) which shows both high operating speed and accuracy. Based on this architecture, a 6GHz 8-bit DDS MMIC is designed and fabricated in 60GHz GaAs HBT Technology. The DDS MMIC includes 8-bit pipeline accumulator, an 8×8×3bits WCR, two combined DACs and an analog Gilbert Cell for sine-wave generation with 8-bit amplitude resolution. The DDS chip is tested in on-wafer measurement system. The measured spurious free dynamic range (SFDR) is 33.96dBc with 2.367GHz output under a 6GHz maximum clock (FCW=0×65). It shows an average SFDR of 37.5dBc and the worst case SFDR of 31.4dBc (FCW=0×70) within the whole Nyquist band under a 5GHz clock frequency. The whole chip occupies 2.4×2mm2 of area consuming 3.27W of power from a single −4.6Vpower supply.

Conventionally, source followers have been used at the block of track-and-hold amplifiers (THA) for highspeed medium-bit analog-to-digital converters (ADCs). Even though the input signals of an ADC are fully differential, two single-ended source followers should be normally used. This is because differential source followers have some drawbacks. In this study, a wideband fully differential source follower is presented to obtain maximum efficiency of a fully differential THA. Because a cross coupling technique at the differential nodes is adopted, the performance of the proposed source follower is superior to the performance of conventional followers. The result of Spurious Free Dynamic Range(SFDR) is -66.92dBc for F <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">in</sub> =F <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">s</sub> /2 at F <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">S</sub> =500MHz. The SFDR of the proposed source follower is better by about 8.6dB than the SFDR of a conventional source follower under the same experimental conditions. To verify them, an 8-b cascaded folding ADC which includes the proposed source follower is fabricated with a 0.13um CMOS technology.

A 4-stage pipeline ROM-less direct digital frequency synthesizer (DDFS) with equal division interpolation is proposed in this work. To attain higher SFDR (spurious free dynamic range) and faster clock rate, the hardware cost and delay using different segments with various interpolation equations are analyzed systematically to explore the optimal solution. The parabolic equations with proper selection of coefficients and factorized operation orders based on optimized hardware cost and delay are finally utilized to enhance SFDR. The proposed design is demonstrated by the physical implementation on Altera FPGA platform. The average SFDR is measured to be 68.4242 dBc with 1.1659 dBc deviation over 33 times of experiments. The measured SFDR is proved to outperform many previous DDFS works even if they were implemented on silicon.

This paper presents a simple, linearized fiber-optic link that is capable of realizing a high spurious free dynamic range (SFDR) at different input RF signal frequencies without the need of readjusting system parameters. The link is based on a commercial dual-polarization modulator followed by a linear polarizer. The third-order nonlinearity at the third-order intermodulation distortion frequency can be cancelled by designing the angle of the linear polarizer. No electrical component is involved in the linearization process. The high SFDR performance is theoretically analyzed, simulated using photonic simulation software, and experimentally verified. Experimental verification of the dual-polarization modulator-based linearized fiber-optic link shows that a high SFDR of more than 124 dB⋅Hz4/5 is obtained at different input RF signal frequencies over a 2-18 GHz bandwidth. An SFDR of 127.3 dB⋅Hz4/5 is also demonstrated with the use of an optical amplifier to increase the link output average optical power, which is among the highest reported SFDRs measured in a fiber-optic link.

Photonic generation and theoretical investigation of phase noise in quadrupling and 12-tupling millimeter wave Signal using optical self-heterodyne system

We optimize the linearity performance of silicon carrier-depletion Mach-Zehnder optical modulator through controlling the doping concentration. The optical field distribution in the waveguide is a Gaussian-like distribution. As the doping concentration increases, the dynamic depletion width of the PN junction under the same modulation signal will decrease, and the integration width of the overlap between the Gaussian-like optical field distribution and the depletion region will become smaller. Therefore the modulated signal has less nonlinear components. Our simulation results proved this analysis. We also fabricated different devices with different doping concentrations. By adopting a ten times doping concentration, the spurious free dynamic range (SFDR) for third-order intermodulation distortion (TID) increases from 109.2 dB.Hz2/3 to 113.7 dB.Hz2/3 and the SFDR for second harmonic distortion (SHD) increases from 87.6 dB.Hz1/2 to 97.5 dB.Hz1/2 at a driving frequency of 2 GHz. When the driving frequency is 20 GHz, the SFDRs for TID and SHD distortions are 110.3 dB.Hz2/3 and 96 dB.Hz1/2, respectively.