A 1pJ/bit 10Gbps optical carrier-injection ring modulator and all-digital driver circuit in 45nm SOI

Bandwidth versus energy is a tradeoff in all systems and with the growing parallelism of SOCs, bandwidth is a developing bottleneck. A high-speed photonic link network was developed operating at 10Gbps and consuming 1pJ/bit, both in low to high and high to low transitions. Photonic link networks are a disruptive technology, providing low energy and high bandwidth communication, as is demonstrated by this paper. This research focuses on controlling the amount of charge entering the PN-diode structure of a photonic ring modulator to transmit changing bit values in a constrained monolithic process based on the electrical parameters extracted from a simulated physical model of the modulator. A double-data-rate (DDR) driver transmitter circuit for PN junction photonic micro-ring modulator resonator was designed, simulated and tested in 45nm SOI.