Silicon Modulators for the Generation of Advanced Modulation Formats

Silicon photonics has appeared in the recent years as the best suited technology for fulfilling the demands of future optical interconnects. In this framework, modulators are key elements in the performance of an optical link. In order to achieve modulation in silicon the Free-Carrier Plasma Dispersion (FCPD) effect is normally used. In fact, silicon modulators based on carrier depletion have been demonstrated with outstanding performance up to 40 Gbps. However, keeping up with bandwidth demands will require the use of more complex modulation formats like PAM4 or QPSK. At the same time, to avoid dispersion compensation circuits, the use of the O-Band (1260 nm – 1360 nm) is preferred for short range optical communications. In this work we present our results on the generation of BPSK/QPSK signals using silicon modulators.