Fully Integrated Optoelectronic Receiver with Robust PAM-N Data Recovery ‒ FIORD

In classical CDR architectures, traditional phase detectors (PD) such as the Alexander PD (APD), commonly used for NRZ data, lead to an unacceptable amount of data dependent jitter when applied to PAM-N Signals, caused by the intermediate Signal transitions with different phase delays. This proposal introduces a novel CDR approach, particularly tailored for PAM-N Signals and overcoming the mentioned issues. The ultimate objective of this research proposal is to advance state-of-the-art optical Rx architectures by demonstrating a monolithically integrated high-speed low-jitter PAM-N CDR solution for future photonic transceivers. This technology not only enables significant robustness and bit-error rate improvements, but more importantly enables significant data rate up-scaling.