Silicon Photonic Microring Resonator-Based Transceivers for Compact WDM Optical Interconnects

Date
Dec 8, 2016, 4:30 pm5:45 pm
Location
E-Quad, B205

Speaker

Details

Event Description

Abstract: The rapid growth of I/O bandwidth in applications such as datacenters and supercomputers motivate the development of interconnect architectures that can dramatically scale bandwidth density in an energy-efficient manner. This talk examines the potential of silicon photonic microring resonator-based optical transceivers for compact wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) optical interconnects. An overview of the photonic devices typically found in a ring resonator optical interconnect platform is provided and the design of transceiver circuits which address key challenges related to the modulators and drop filters is described. The possibility of further improvements in bandwidth density via efficient implementations of >50Gb/s PAM4 modulation with the microring modulators is detailed.
 
Bio: Samuel Palermo (S’98-M’07) received the B.S. and M.S. degree in electrical engineering from Texas A&M University, College Station, TX in 1997 and 1999, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from Stanford University, Stanford, CA in 2007. From 1999 to 2000, he was with Texas Instruments, Dallas, TX, where he worked on the design of mixed-signal integrated circuits for high-speed serial data communication. From 2006 to 2008, he was with Intel Corporation, Hillsboro, OR, where he worked on high-speed optical and electrical I/O architectures. In 2009, he joined the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department of Texas A&M University where he is currently an associate professor. His research interests include high-speed electrical and optical interconnect architectures, high performance clocking circuits, and integrated sensor systems.     Dr. Palermo is a recipient of a 2013 NSF-CAREER award. He is a member of Eta Kappa Nu and IEEE. He has served as an associate editor for IEEE Transactions on Circuits and System – II from 2011 to 2015 and has served on the IEEE CASS Board of Governors from 2011 to 2012. He is currently the General Co-Chair of the IEEE Optical Interconnects Conference. He was a coauthor of the Jack Raper Award for Outstanding Technology-Directions Paper at the 2009 International Solid-State Circuits Conference and the Best Student Paper at the 2014 Midwest Symposium on Circuits and Systems. He received the Texas A&M University Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Outstanding Professor Award in 2014 and the Engineering Faculty Fellow Award in 2015.