Silicon 16-QAM optical modulator driven by four binary electrical signals

Jianfeng Ding; Sizhu Shao; Lei Zhang; Xin Fu; Lin Yang

doi:10.1364/OL.42.001636

Silicon 16-QAM optical modulator driven by four binary electrical signals

Opt Lett. 2017 Apr 15;42(8):1636-1639. doi: 10.1364/OL.42.001636.

Authors

Jianfeng Ding, Sizhu Shao, Lei Zhang, Xin Fu, Lin Yang

PMID: 28409817
DOI: 10.1364/OL.42.001636

Abstract

We demonstrate a silicon 16-quadrature amplitude modulation (16-QAM) optical modulator. Unlike traditional 16-QAM optical modulator with two Mach-Zehnder modulators (MZMs) driven by two four-level electrical signals, the device is based on four MZMs driven by four binary electrical signals. With the simple electrical driving configuration, the device generates a 16-QAM optical signal at 20 Gbaud with an error vector magnitude of 13.7%.