Pushing Capacity Limits With Multi-Segment SiP Modulators

The use of multiple segments on a silicon photonic modulator can increase bandwidth at the cost of greater complexity in the driving signals. We propose and demonstrate a simple driving scheme for use with dual segment modulators that involves very little additional complexity when equal length segments are used. The increased bandwidth with segmentation scales linearly with the number of segments, but the net bit rate does not; net rate depends on many factors. With an IQ modulator with two 2 mm segments, we demonstrate an improvement of 14% in net bit rate as compared to a single 4 mm segment. We examine the trade-offs in moving to three-segment modulation. We explore implementation penalties and use probabilistic shaping and optical pre-emphasis to achieve a net rate of 1.07 Tb/s with dual polarization transmission over 80 km of fiber at 116 Gbaud using 64QAM modulation.