Linear-drive amplifier-less 112 Gbit/s PAM4 operation of a silicon-organic hybrid (SOH) Mach-Zehnder modulator at 265 mV pp

We demonstrate an optically packaged silicon-organic hybrid (SOH) Mach-Zehnder modulator that can be directly driven by industry-standard CMOS SerDes chips without any additional RF amplifiers. In a proof-of-concept experiment we show signaling at PAM4 data rates of 112 Gbit/s with ultra-low peak-to-peak drive-voltage swings down to 265 mV pp . We believe that our work marks an important step towards radically simplified linear-drive optical transceivers with unprecedented efficiency that can rely on sub-500 mV pp CMOS-level drive signals without any additional amplification.