PAM4 Signal Regenerator using Mach-Zehnder Interferometer based Optical Neural Network (ONN)

We propose and demonstrate by simulation a silicon-photonics (SiPh) based optical-neural-network (ONN) for 4-level-pulse-amplitude-modulation (PAM4) signal regeneration. The 40-GBaud/s PAM4 signal at 1550 nm can satisfy soft-decision-forward-error-correction (SD-FEC) (i.e. bit-error-rate, BER < 2.4 × 10
^-2
) after 12 km standard-single-mode-fiber (SSMF) transmission with the proposed ONN.