# US 2014/0153931 A1 · Silicon photonics multicarrier optical transceiver

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- Number: US 2014/0153931 A1
- Document ID: US20140153931A1
- Status: Published application
- Kind: A1
- Application number: 13/894,367
- Filed: 2013-05-14
- Published: 2014-06-05
- Earliest claimed: 2012-05-14
- Assignees: Acacia Communications, Inc.
- Applicants: Acacia Communications Inc.
- Inventors: Christopher DOERR
- Web page: https://patentgrep.com/patent/US20140153931A1

## CPC

- H04B 10/40: Transceivers
- H04B 10/505: {using external modulation}
- H04B 10/506: {Multiwavelength transmitters}
- H04B 10/541: {Digital intensity or amplitude modulation}
- H04B 10/556: Digital modulation, e.g. differential phase shift keying [DPSK] or frequency shift keying [FSK]
- H04B 10/60: Receivers
- H04B: TRANSMISSION

## Abstract

Disclosed herein are techniques, methods, structures and apparatus that provide a silicon photonics multicarrier optical transceiver wherein both the transmitter and receiver are integrated on a single silicon chip and which generates a plurality of carriers through the effect of an on-chip modulator, amplifies the optical power of the carriers through the effect of an off-chip amplifier, and generates M orthogonal sets of carriers through the effect of an on-chip basis former.

## Claims

### Claim 1

A multicarrier coherent optical transceiver comprising:
a single silicon substrate having integrated thereon a transmitter and a receiver, said transmitter comprising;
an on-chip phase modulator that receives as input an optical signal from an optical signal source, generates N carriers, and directs the N carriers to an off-chip optical amplifier;
an on-chip basis former that receives as input amplified N carriers from the off-chip optical amplifier and generates M orthogonal sets of carriers; and
a number of modulators each receiving as input a particular one of the generated M orthogonal carriers and modulating the received carrier with data to generate a modulated output; and
a power combiner for combining the modulated outputs of the modulators into a transmitter output signal; and
said receiver comprising;
a polarization splitter and rotator that receives a multicarrier input signal and applies a split input signal to a plurality of hybrids;
the plurality of hybrids optically connected to the basis former;
wherein the off-chip optical amplifier is not integrated into the single silicon substrate.

### Claim 2 (depends on 1)

The multicarrier coherent optical transceiver of claim 1 wherein the on-chip basis former is a wavelength demultiplexer.

### Claim 3 (depends on 1)

The multicarrier coherent optical transceiver of claim 1 wherein the on-chip basis former comprises a 1×M power splitter including M waveguides of linearly increasing path length.

### Claim 4 (depends on 3)

The multicarrier coherent optical transceiver of claim 3 wherein the path-length difference between the M waveguides is defined by c/(fngM) where c is the speed of light in a vacuum and ng is the waveguide group index and f is the frequency at which the phase modulator is driven sinusoidally.

### Claim 5 (depends on 4)

The multicarrier coherent optical transceiver of claim 4 wherein the basis former comprises a plurality of individual basis formers.

### Claim 6 (depends on 5)

The multicarrier coherent optical transceiver of claim 5 wherein the basis sets of carriers operate as both inputs to the modulators in the transmitter and local oscillators in the receiver.

### Claim 7

A multicarrier coherent optical transceiver comprising a single silicon substrate having integrated thereon both a transmitter and a receiver wherein a plurality of carriers are generated through the effect of a phase modulator integrated on the silicon substrate; the plurality of carriers are amplified through the effect of an optical amplifier not integrated onto the single silicon substrate; and the optically amplified carriers are separated into one or more orthogonal sets of carriers by one or more basis formers integrated on the silicon substrate.

### Claim 8 (depends on 7)

The multicarrier coherent optical transceiver of claim 7 wherein the basis former is one selected from the group consisting of: a wavelength demultiplexer and a power splitter connected to a parallel array of delay lines.

### Claim 9 (depends on 7)

The multicarrier coherent optical transceiver of claim 7 wherein the basis former comprises a 1×M power splitter including M waveguides of linearly increasing path length, wherein the path-length difference between the M waveguides is defined by c/(fngM) where c is the speed of light in a vacuum and ng is the waveguide group index and f is the frequency at which the phase modulator is driven sinusoidally.