OP: Collaborative Research: Coherent Integrated Si-Photonic Links

我们的社会正处于集成电路技术和制造业新革命的风口浪尖。这项新技术将成功地将联合收割机电子和光子系统结合起来，创造出以前无法想象的功能和性能。在许多通信场景中，迫切需要具有高效利用面积、能量和频谱资源的这种复杂的片上电子光子系统。例如，当前的数据中心和高性能超级计算机都是功率受限的。高带宽密度和高能效的光子互连将允许连接到处理器芯片级，提高整个数据中心的功率效率和利用率，显著影响未来十年的国家能源消耗。然而，由于缺乏大规模的集成方法、设计方法和统一的跨层设计，这些系统的实现受到了限制。本项目中提出的电子-光子设计和系统设计方法的影响不仅涉及通信系统，还涉及各种其他复杂的电子-光子系统（例如检测、传感和仪器）。多学科的工作将教育跨越电子和光子系统边界的工程师和科学家的独特作物。 该研究项目的目标是利用最近开发的大规模电子-光子集成方法来设计短距离相干调制光子链路，显着提高面积，能量和频谱效率。 所提出的用于相干高阶调制发射器和接收器的电子-光子电路拓扑利用每个域的优点并校正另一个域中的非理想性。从建模和仿真基础设施开始，拟议的研究包括Verilog-A中独特的仿真和建模框架，该框架允许在大信号，非线性，时变条件下对光子和电子电路进行真正的联合仿真。这种能力为电子和光子电路的相互作用提供了重要的见解。它是必不可少的使用谐振组件作为第二个关键因素，在设计高效的电子-光子通信系统。虽然能量和面积效率高，谐振元件需要复杂的波长稳定回路和电子驱动器来补偿其传递函数特性，这是通过协同仿真方法和所提出的集成方法中的大量高性能晶体管来实现的。

Our society is on the cusp of a new revolution in integrated circuit technology and manufacturing. The new technology will successfully combine electronic and photonic systems creating previously unimagined functionality and performance. Such sophisticated electronic-photonic systems-on-chip with highly-efficient use of area, energy and spectral resources are critically needed in many communication scenarios. For example, current data-centers and high-performance supercomputers are both power-constrained. High-bandwidth density and high-energy efficiency photonic interconnects would allow the connectivity down to the processor chip level increasing the power-efficiency and utilization of the whole data-center, significantly impacting the national energy consumption in the next decade. However, the lack of large-scale integration approach, design methodology and unified cross-layer design has prevented the realization of these systems. The impact of the electronic-photonic designs and system design methodology proposed in this project spans not only communication systems, but also a variety of other sophisticated electronic-photonic systems (e.g. detection, sensing, and instrumentation). The multi-disciplinary work will educate a unique crop of engineers and scientists that cross the boundaries of electronic and photonic systems. The objective of the research project is to utilize recently developed large-scale electronic-photonic integration approaches to design short-reach coherent-modulation photonic links that significantly improve the area, energy and spectral-efficiency. The proposed electronic-photonic circuit topologies for coherent high-order modulation transmitters and receivers leverage the advantages of each domain and correct for the non-idealities in the other. Starting from the modeling and simulation infrastructure, the proposed research comprises a unique simulation and modeling framework in Verilog-A, which allows for true co-simulation of photonic and electronic circuits, under large signal, non-linear, time-varying conditions. This capability gives vital insights into the interaction of electronic and photonic circuits. It is essential for the use of the resonant components as the second key ingredient in designing efficient electronic-photonic communication systems. Although energy and area efficient, the resonant components require sophisticated wavelength stabilization loops and electronic drive to compensate for their transfer-function characteristics, which are enabled by the co-simulation methodology and abundance of high-performance transistors in the proposed integration approaches.