Optically biased and controlled signal processing in silicon photonics.

Optically biased and controlled signal processing is demonstrated in a commercial foundry silicon photonics integrated circuit process. Data and control signals are carried by different wavelengths in a WDM format. Optical signals on bias and control channels are converted to electrical voltages using series stacked photodiodes operating in photoconductive mode. Two examples of this scheme, namely, an amplitude modulator and a two-tap sequence detector capable of supporting different modulation formats, are experimentally demonstrated. The amplitude modulator requires 0.25 mW of optical control signal power to tune its optical output power by 15 dB. The two-tap sequence detector maps the consecutive symbols of a modulated signal such as OOK, PAM-3, and PAM-4, to distinct levels. A maximum control signal power of 5 mW is needed to calibrate and bias the sequence detector. This latter scheme may be extended to detect longer sequences and other modulation formats.