Energy-Efficient Optical Transceiver Circuits Enabled by 3D Heterogeneous Integration

An optical transceiver architecture based on 12nm FinFET front-end circuits that are co-designed with silicon photonic microdisk modulators and drop filters achieves sub-500fJ/b operation at 18Gb/s. The optical transmitter utilizes a low-power quarter-rate architecture, while the receiver employs a variable-bandwidth transimpedance amplifier for improved sensitivity.