Silicon photonics devices for integrated analog signal processing and sampling

Silicon photonics offers the possibility of a reduction in size weight and power for many optical systems, and could open up the ability to build optical systems with complexities that would otherwise be impossible to achieve. Silicon photonics is an emerging technology that has already been inserted into commercial communication products. This technology has also been applied to analog signal processing applications. MIT Lincoln Laboratory in collaboration with groups at MIT has developed a toolkit of silicon photonic devices with a focus on the needs of analog systems. This toolkit includes low-loss waveguides, a high-speed modulator, ring resonator based filter bank, and all-silicon photodiodes. The components are integrated together for a hybrid photonic and electronic analog-to-digital converter. The development and performance of these devices will be discussed. Additionally, the linear performance of these devices, which is important for analog systems, is also investigated.