Machine learning adaptive receiver for PAM-4 modulated optical interconnection based on silicon microring modulator

Modulation nonlinearity can severely distort multi-level modulation, and signal processing to mitigate the distortion is highly desirable. In this work, we demonstrated a machine learning method for adaptive detection of 4-level pulse amplitude modulation (PAM-4) signals modulated by silicon micro-ring modulator (Si-MRM). The very limited linear modulation range of Si-MRM leads to serious modulation nonlinearity distortion for high-level modulations like PAM-4 with the consideration of wavelength drift. Our approach is based on the support vector machine (SVM) method which can learn the nonlinear distortion of Si-MRM during PAM-4 modulation. Thus, the detection can be made adaptive for PAM-4 signals with nonlinear levels and level dependent noise. The modulation nonlinearity distortion of PAM-4 has been characterized in terms of level deviation (LD) with respect to wavelength drift. Up to 2.7-dB receiver sensitivity gain is obtained at about 26% LD by using the proposed SVM machine learning method. The receiver sensitivity-float range can be squeezed to be within 0.3 dB even with up to 30% LD which indicates a stable detection of PAM-4 signals along with wavelength drift. Up to 3.63-dB receiver sensitivity improvement has been experimentally achieved at 50 Gbps for PAM-4 signals modulated by a Si-MRM and after 2-km standard single mode fiber (SSMF) transmission. The stable operation of Si-MRM is very difficult and very important. The proof-of-concept results indicate the very promising capability of machine learning method for stable detection of PAM-4 signals modulated by Si-MRM, which is of great significance for practical application of Si-MRM in optical interconnection.