Nandish Mehta

EECS Department, University of California, Berkeley

Technical Report No. UCB/EECS-2020-195

December 1, 2020

Silicon-photonics (Si-Ph) has emerged as a viable solution to handle exponentially growing data traffic in today's data centers. It transfers data faster and over a longer distance while leveraging efficiency and cost benefits of existing high-volume CMOS manufacturing infrastructure. As the Si-Ph platform mature, new high-performance photonics blocks integrated close to CMOS transistors are made available. By moving certain functionality to these blocks, the performance of conventional analog mixed-signal circuits can be improved to enable exciting new integrated applications like LiDAR, biosensing, high-performance computing, etc.

This thesis discusses two systems that benefit from integrated Si-Ph. First, the sensitivity of an optical receiver is improved using a monolithic integrated differential detector that comprises a 3-dB power splitter and a SiGe detector. A revised test-chip further improves the receiver sensitivity by using a high-responsivity resonant detector that is innately differential. This thesis also demonstrates a coherent laser-forwarded binary-phase-shift-keying (BPSK) link at 10 Gb/s with a fully integrated phase modulator, 3-dB coupler, and balanced photodetector in a monolithic zero-change 45nm SOI CMOS.

The second system discussed in this thesis is an optically sampled ADC that samples an RF input using optical pulses from a mode-locked laser. An ADC prototype, realized in a 3D integrated silicon-photonic platform, achieves 37 dB SNDR (6b ENOB) for 45GHz input with 36fs estimated sampling jitter. Circuit techniques that overcome issues like single-ended to differential conversion and cross-talk in the ADC are also discussed in this thesis.

Advisors: Vladimir Stojanovic

---

BibTeX citation:

@phdthesis{Mehta:EECS-2020-195,
    Author= {Mehta, Nandish},
    Editor= {Stojanovic, Vladimir},
    Title= {Enhancing Performance of Analog Mixed Signal Circuits using Integrated Silicon-Photonics},
    School= {EECS Department, University of California, Berkeley},
    Year= {2020},
    Month= {Dec},
    Url= {http://www2.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/2020/EECS-2020-195.html},
    Number= {UCB/EECS-2020-195},
    Abstract= {Silicon-photonics (Si-Ph) has emerged as a viable solution to handle exponentially growing data traffic in today's data centers. It transfers data faster and over a longer distance while leveraging efficiency and cost benefits of existing high-volume CMOS manufacturing infrastructure. As the Si-Ph platform mature, new high-performance photonics blocks integrated close to CMOS transistors are made available. By moving certain functionality to these blocks, the performance of conventional analog mixed-signal circuits can be improved to enable exciting new integrated applications like LiDAR, biosensing, high-performance computing, etc.

This thesis discusses two systems that benefit from integrated Si-Ph. First, the sensitivity of an optical receiver is improved using a monolithic integrated differential detector that comprises a 3-dB power splitter and a SiGe detector. A revised test-chip further improves the receiver sensitivity by using a high-responsivity resonant detector that is innately differential. This thesis also demonstrates a coherent laser-forwarded binary-phase-shift-keying (BPSK) link at 10 Gb/s with a fully integrated phase modulator, 3-dB coupler, and balanced photodetector in a monolithic zero-change 45nm SOI CMOS.

The second system discussed in this thesis is an optically sampled ADC that samples an RF input using optical pulses from a mode-locked laser. An ADC prototype, realized in a 3D integrated silicon-photonic platform, achieves 37 dB SNDR (6b ENOB) for 45GHz input with 36fs estimated sampling jitter. Circuit techniques that overcome issues like single-ended to differential conversion and cross-talk in the ADC are also discussed in this thesis.},
}

EndNote citation:

%0 Thesis
%A Mehta, Nandish 
%E Stojanovic, Vladimir 
%T Enhancing Performance of Analog Mixed Signal Circuits using Integrated Silicon-Photonics
%I EECS Department, University of California, Berkeley
%D 2020
%8 December 1
%@ UCB/EECS-2020-195
%U http://www2.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/2020/EECS-2020-195.html
%F Mehta:EECS-2020-195