Linear Circuit Topologies for Fibreoptic Front Ends with > 100 GHz Bandwidth

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Historically, the fiberoptic systems at the backbone of the Internet and in data centres have been one of the main semiconductor technology drivers, pushing Moore's law to its fundamental limits. They require the most advanced 3nm FinFET, 450 GHz SiGe BiCMOS or InP transistor technologies, as well as silicon photonics and InP photonics technologies.Today, one of the greatest challenges facing the fiberoptic systems is how to continue to increase the bandwidth of the electronic circuits to 100 GHz and beyond given that the speed of CMOS transistors has saturated. Without such progress, 6G mobile networks and AI cannot continue to scale. This project will explore ground-breaking electronic-photonic interface circuits to enable cloud computing and internet traffic speed to scale beyond the end of this decade. We will investigate and develop electronic circuits for fibreoptic systems that transmit and receive data at over one and a half terabits per second. This data rate is ~4 times faster than commercial systems. The energy consumed per bit will be at least 2 times lower than today's technologies. Our approach uses a new 450 GHz SiGe BiCMOS technology now under development and novel circuit topologies for linear broadband optical modulator drivers and time interleaved linear analog-to-digital and digital to analog fibreoptic receiver and transmitter front ends to achieve the highest possible bandwidth and data rate per optical wavelength at the lowest cost and energy per bit. This ensures that our solution will be low-power, low-cost, compatible with mass manufacturing processes, and scalable to multi-terabit transmission using several optical wavelengths in the future. This project will benefit Ciena and Canada by creating new technologies that can translate into future products and jobs, as well as the training of highly skilled innovators, strengthening Ciena's leadership position in long haul fibreoptic systems and Canada's role in the information and communication technology sector.