Reconfigurable and Real-Time Nyquist OTDM Demultiplexing in Silicon Photonics

We demonstrate for the first time, to the best of our knowledge, reconfigurable and real-time orthogonal time-domain demultiplexing of coherent multilevel Nyquist signals in silicon photonics. No external pulse source is needed and frequencytime coherence is used to sample the incoming Nyquist OTDM signal with orthogonal sinc-shaped Nyquist pulse sequences using Mach-Zehnder modulators. All the parameters such as bandwidth and channel selection are completely tunable in the electrical domain. The feasibility of this scheme is demonstrated through a demultiplexing experiment over the entire C-band (1530 nm - 1550 nm), employing 24 Gbaud Nyquist QAM signals due to experimental constraints on the transmitter side. However, the silicon Mach-Zehnder modulator with a 3-dB bandwidth of only 16 GHz can demultiplex Nyquist pulses of 90 GHz optical bandwidth suggesting a possibility to reach symbol rates up to 90 GBd in an integrated Nyquist transceiver.