An optical digital‐to‐analog converter with a built‐in intensity converter consisting of silicon waveguide

Optical digital-to-analog converters (DACs) are key to overcoming the enormous power consumption caused by slowdown of Moore's Law. In previous work, an optical DAC consisting a signal generator and intensity converter was presented. The generating component integrated into device, but higher level device integration is desirable. An with built-in for 2-bit binary phase-shift keying (BPSK) demonstrated. consists two delay line interferometers (DLIs) silicon waveguides. first used generate quadrature PSK (QPSK) from BPSK signals, second convert QPSK constellation light intensities. Experimental results show that digital codes 00, 01, 10, 11 can be successfully converted four different intensities depending on their pattern at 10 Gbps.