Miller David A B
Ginzton Laboratory, Stanford University, 348 Via Pueblo Mall, Stanford, California 94305-4088, USA.
Opt Express. 2012 Mar 12;20 Suppl 2:A293-308. doi: 10.1364/OE.20.00A293.
We analyze energy consumption in optical modulators operated in depletion and intended for low-power interconnect applications. We include dynamic dissipation from charging modulator capacitance and net energy consumption from absorption and photocurrent, both in reverse and small forward bias. We show that dynamic dissipation can be independent of static bias, though only with specific kinds of bias circuits. We derive simple expressions for the effects of photocurrent on energy consumption, valid in both reverse and small forward bias. Though electroabsorption modulators with large reverse bias have substantial energy penalties from photocurrent dissipation, we argue that modulator diodes with thin depletion regions and operating in small reverse and/or forward bias could have little or no such photocurrent energy penalty, even conceivably being more energy-efficient than an ideal loss-less modulator.
我们分析了用于低功耗互连应用的耗尽型光调制器中的能量消耗。我们考虑了调制器电容充电的动态功耗以及反向和小正向偏置下吸收和光电流产生的净能量消耗。我们表明，动态功耗可以与静态偏置无关，但前提是使用特定类型的偏置电路。我们推导了光电流对能量消耗影响的简单表达式，该表达式在反向和小正向偏置下均有效。尽管具有大反向偏置的电吸收调制器会因光电流耗散而产生大量能量损耗，但我们认为，具有薄耗尽区且在小反向和/或正向偏置下工作的调制器二极管可能几乎没有或根本没有这种光电流能量损耗，甚至可以想象其比理想的无损耗调制器更节能。
