Abstract—We investigate the analog performances of a silicon Mach-Zehnder interferometer electro-optical modulator. We characterize the optical responses upon various DC and RF voltage supplies. We also measured the spur-free dynamic range (SFDR) of the modulator using two-tone method, showing maximum SFDR of 40dBc and 46dBc respectively for second harmonic distortion and third-order intermodulation distortion.
Index Terms—MZI modulator, slope efficiency, spur-free dynamic range, silicon integrated device.
Xianshu Luo, Junfeng Song, Xiaoguang Tu, Tsung-Yang Liow, Qing Fang, Mingbin Yu, and Guo-Qiang Lo are with the Institute of Microelectronics, A*STAR (e-mail: luox@ime.a-star.edu.sg)
Junfeng Song is also with State Key Laboratory on Integrated Opto-Electronics, College of Electronic Science and Engineering, Jilin University, Changchun, People’s Republic of China, 130021.
Cite: Xianshu Luo, Junfeng Song, Xiaoguang Tu, Tsung-Yang Liow, Qing Fang, Mingbin Yu, and Guo-Qiang Lo, "Characterization of Silicon Electro-Optical Modulator for Analog Optical Links," International Journal of Information and Electronics Engineering vol. 2, no. 6, pp. 879-881, 2012.