Volume: 74, Issue: 3, March 2026
Yu-Lun LuoA 15–25-GHz Dual-Differential Photonic Front-End With Silicon Traveling-Wave Mach–Zehnder Modulator and 22-nm CMOS Driver
Abstract
DOI: 10.1109/TMTT.2025.3645603
IEEEXplore: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/11317785
Device
Dual-differential (DD) photonic front-end with silicon traveling-wave (TW) Mach–Zehnder modulator (MZM) and 22-nm CMOS driver
Spectrum
15 – 25 GHz
Novelty
A novel DD driving scheme for an MZM and demonstrates the integration of a 22-nm CMOS driver with a silicon photonic DD-TW-MZM. This advanced driving scheme linearly improves front-end gain by 5 dB compared to previous differential designs.
Slow wave transmission lines (SW-TL) and phase recovery loop techniques are applied to the DD-TW-MZM for velocity matching and achieving required bandwidth.
Application
Radio-over Fiber (RoF) links in future wireless communication systems for efficient deployment of remote antenna units (RAUs).
Performance
For 1mm MZM, 95.2 dB*Hz spurious free dynamic range (SFDR) (grating coupler), 105 dB*Hz (edge coupler); for 2mm MZM, 91.1 dB*Hz SFDR (grating coupler), 105 dB*Hz SFDR (edge coupler);
For 1mm MZM, 27.1 dB noise figure (NF) (grating coupler), 12.2 dB NF (edge coupler); for 2mm MZM, 34.1 dB NF (grating coupler), 13.4 dB NF (edge coupler);
11.3% error vector magnitude (EVM) at 3 Gb/s 16-QAM operation with the 1-mm MZM.