Abstract
This chapter motivates the development of silicon photonic interconnect technologies based on vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs) for future datacom applications, demanding cost effective, spectrally efficient and high-speed transmission links. We shall first present a classification of current interconnect technologies, used transmission techniques and requirements for the next generation of communication links. Furthermore, we shall discuss recent research activities on the integration of VCSELs in silicon photonics and the potential advantages of VCSEL-based silicon photonic transceiver solutions. In the subsequent sections, we introduce commercially available device structures emitting at tele- and datacom wavelengths. Based on experimentally determined characteristics, we model the system behavior and performance for high-speed coherent transmission links using quadrature phase-shift keying (QPSK). In addition, a brief introduction in digital signal processing is given. Following, incoherent, as well as coherent VCSEL-based transmission links are presented and analyzed. System performance and behavior are investigated with long-wavelength VCSELs as transmitter. Dependencies on the data rate and the bias point are further discussed. Finally, we conclude this chapter and give an outlook on the future VCSEL-based interconnects using spectrally efficient transmission techniques.
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank VERTILAS GmbH, Munich, Germany, for providing the VCSELs. We’d also like to thank Prof. Dr.-Ing. Dr. H. C. Petermann for his ongoing support and counsel. Furthermore, we want to thank our colleagues at IHP, Innovations for High Performance Microelectronics, Frankfurt (Oder), Germany and at Technische Universität Berlin, Germany—namely Anna Peczek, Marcel Kroh, Georg Winzer and Gregor Ronniger—for their support. Also, we want to thank the group from Prof. James Lott (SFB 787, project C01) for the cooperation and the fruitful discussions.
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Seiler, P.M., Tillack, B., Zimmermann, L. (2020). VCSEL-Based Silicon Photonic Interconnect Technologies. In: Kneissl, M., Knorr, A., Reitzenstein, S., Hoffmann, A. (eds) Semiconductor Nanophotonics. Springer Series in Solid-State Sciences, vol 194. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35656-9_11
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