Aurrion mixes datacom and telecom lasers on a wafer

Silicon photonics player, Aurrion, has detailed the making of multiple laser designs for datacom and telecom on a single wafer. The multiple designs on one wafer benefit the economics of telecom lasers by manufacturing them alongside higher-volume datacom sources.

"There is an inevitability of the co-mingling of electronics and optics and we are just at the beginning"

Eric Hall, Aurrion

Aurrion's long-term vision for its heterogeneous integration approach to silicon photonics is to tackle all stages of a communication link: the high-bandwidth transmitter, switch and receiver. Heterogeneous integration refers to the introduction of III-V material - used for lasers, modulators and receivers - onto the silicon wafer where it is processed alongside the silicon using masks and lithography.  

In a post-deadline paper given at OFC/NFOEC 2013, the fabless start-up detailed the making of various transmitters on a silicon wafer. These include tunable lasers for telecom that cover the C- and L-bands, and uncooled laser arrays for datacom.

The lasers are narrow-linewidth tunable devices for long-haul coherent applications. According to Aurrion, achieving a narrow-linewidth laser typically requires an external cavity whose size makes it difficult to produce a compact design when integrated with the modulator.

Having a tunable laser integrated with the modulator on the same silicon photonics platform will enable compact 100 Gigabit coherent pluggable modules. "The 100 Gig equivalent of the tunable XFP or SFP+," says Eric Hall, vice president of business development at Aurrion.

Hall admits that traditional indium-phosphide laser manufacturers will likely integrate tunable lasers with the modulator to produce compact narrow-linewidth designs. "There will be other approaches but it is exciting that we can now make this laser and modulator on this platform," says Hall. "And it becomes very exciting when you make these on the same wafer as high-volume datacom components." 

Aurrion's vision of a coherent transmitter and a 16-laser array made on the same wafer. Source: Aurrion

The wafer's datacom devices include a 4-channel laser array for 100GBASE-LR4 10km reach applications and a 400 Gigabit transmitter design comprising 2x8 wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) arrays for a 16x25Gbps design, each laser spaced 200GHz apart. These could be for 10km or 40km applications depending on the modulator used. "These arrays are for uncooled applications," says Hall. "The idea is these don't have to be coarse WDM but tighter-spaced WDM that hold their wavelength across 20-80oC."

Coarse WDM-based laser arrays do not require a thermo-electric cooler (TEC) but the larger spacing of the wavelengths makes it harder to design beyond 100 Gigabit, says Hall: "Being able to pack in a bunch of wavelengths yet not need a TEC opens up a lot of applications."

Such lasers coupled with different modulators could also benefit 100 Gigabit shorter-reach interfaces currently being discussed in the IEEE, including the possibility of multi-level modulation schemes, says the company.

Aurrion says it is seeing the trend of photonics moving closer to the electronics due to emerging applications.

"Electronics never really noticed photonics because it was so far away and suddenly photonics has encroached into its personal space," says Hall. "There is an inevitability of the co-mingling of electronics and optics and we are just at the beginning."