Simultaneous 45.2 Gbit/s 4-PAM data and 8 GHz reference frequency clock signal transmission over DWDM VCSEL channels for optical interconnects

Abstract

In this paper, we propose and experimentally demonstrate a vertical cavity surface emitting laser (VCSEL)-based simultaneous 45.2 Gbit/s (2×22.6 Gbit/s) 4-PAM data and 8 GHz (2×4 GHz) phase modulated reference frequency (RF) clock signal transmission dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) system for optical interconnects. Two low-cost power-efficient 10 G VCSEL channels with central wavelengths at 1 550.71 nm and 1 551.11 nm are separately modulated with 22.6 Gbit/s 4-PAM data, therefore doubling the channel bit rate. Carrier spectral efficiency per channel is further maximized by exploiting the phase attribute in transmission of a 4 Hz RF clock signal. To further maximize the network capacity, the two VCSEL channels are densely multiplexed at 0.4 nm spacing. We therefore experimentally achieve the network data rate of 45.2 Gbit/s with 8 GHz phase modulated RF clock signal. The results show that receiver sensitivities of −11.02 dBm and −9.98 dBm are experimentally achieved for VCSEL channels of 1 550.71 nm and 1 551.11 nm respectively without the phase modulated RF clock signal. However, the introduction of a phase modulated clock signal contributes to a maximum interference penalty of 0.57 dBm and 0.41 dBm for the considered channels respectively. Simultaneous distribution of transmission data and reference clock signal over shared network structure maximizes the carrier spectral efficiency and network capacity with low cost.