Real-time 850 nm multimode VCSEL to 1 550 nm single mode VCSEL data routing for optical interconnects

Short-reach optical interconnects among massive serves in data centers have attracted extensive research recently. Increasing capacity, cost and power efficiency as well as wavelength switching between data center network nodes are still key challenges for current optical interconnects. In this work, we experimentally demonstrate the real-time intermode optical wavelength switching technique, for high-speed wavelength flexible data center interconnects. A10 Gbit/s 1 550 nm single mode vertical cavity surface emitting laser(VCSEL) is optically injected and used to control a 10 Gbit/s multimode VCSEL carrier at 850 nm. Results show that a clearly open eye diagram is achieved at back-to-back analysis, implying a successful wavelength switch and error-free operation at 10 Gbit/s. A fully optical wavelength conversion of a multimode VCSEL operation at 850 nm using a single mode VCSEL subject to external optical injection at 1 550 nm is reported. This work opens new perspectives towards the development of a cost effective high-speed real-time inter-band wavelength switching technique between servers and network devices operating at different transmission windows at network nodes, for current and future optical interconnects.

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

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.

Time and reference frequency transfer over 850 nm VCSEL for digital telecommunication network synchronization

Accurate time transfer and synchronization between different network nodes is a key functional requirement in digital communication. Developments in optical fiber-based frequency dissemination techniques have improved optical frequency stability over time to much lower levels. In this work, we experimentally present the reference frequency transfer employing 850 nm vertical cavity surface emitting laser(VCSEL) over 100.3 m OM3 multimode fiber for synchronization of clocks on networked devices such as servers and racks/pod at different data center network nodes. A low-cost power-efficient multimode VCSEL with central wavelength at 844.26 nm is directly modulated with a 2 GHz reference frequency(RF) clock signal, and transferred over 100.3 m of OM3 multimode fiber. The single side band(SSB) phase noise of-104.62 dBc/Hz and-100.70 dBc/Hz is experimentally measured at back-to-back(B2 B) and 100.3 m OM3 multimode fiber transmission respectively at a 1 kHz frequency offset. The jitter stability of 0.14 ps and 0.15 ps is experimentally achieved at B2 B and 100.3 m fiber transmission, respectively. This work provides an alternative viable approach for the development of time keeping devices in high-speed short-reach optical communication systems.