A 28GBaud High-Swing Linear Mach-Zehnder Modulators Driver for PAM-4 and Coherent Optical Communications

This paper introduces the design, analysis and simulation results of a driver for high-speed silicon photonic modulators. To achieve the high swing and high linearity simultaneously, several broadband circuit topology and techniques are employed, including the pre-emphasis circuit, variable gain amplifier and push-pull output stage. The driver is implemented in a 130nm BiCMOS process, achieving 22GHz bandwidth, 4V _PP output swing, 900mW power consumption in the post-layout simulation.