Demonstration of a Partially Integrated Silicon Photonics ONU in a Self-Coherent Reflective FDMA PON

We report about the final results of the FABULOUS European project, demonstrating the feasibility of real-time Ethernet transmission on a self-coherent reflective passive optical network, using an optical network unit (ONU) whose main optical functions are performed by a silicon-photonics device; 500 Mbps per user with a power budget of 24 dB in offline processing and 21 dB in real time is shown. We also report details about the packaging process and the special technique developed for the flip-chipping of a CMOS electrical driver, used for driving the ONU with low voltage, onto a silicon Mach-Zehnder modulator.