A 22nm CMOS 15-25GHz Dual-Differential Driver for RF Silicon Photonic Front-End

An RF photonic front-end using dual-differential driving scheme is reported with a 22nm CMOS FD-SOI driver co-integrated with a silicon traveling-wave Mach-Zehnder modulator. A compact design of power splitter and output routing network are implemented on dual-differential driver. An LC input matching network co-designed with bond wire inductance is implemented on a photonic chip to complete the output matching network. The proposed driver is verified with S-parameter and two-tone measurements, achieving 15-25GHz bandwidth with peak 3dBm IIP3 and consumes 448mW. The link performance is demonstrated 11.7% EVM of 16-QAM modulation with 250Mbd at 18GHz carrier frequency.