Integrated electro-optical phase-locked loop for high resolution optical synthesis

Electrical frequency synthesizers have been in existence for several decades and are an integral part of almost every communication and sensing system. In the optical domain, however, despite promising bench-top demonstration of frequency synthesizers, large size, high-power consumption, and high-cost have significantly limited their large deployment compared to their electrical counterparts. Here we report an integrated electro-optical phase locked loop (EOPLL) as the core of an optical synthesizer where photonic and electronic devices are integrated in a standard silicon-on-insulator (SOI) process. A sophisticated integrated electronic-photonic architecture is proposed enabling reliable, low-cost, and high resolution optical synthesis. The small on-chip optical delay and electronically assisted frequency detection and acquisition provide tunable phase and frequency locking. The integrated EOPLL consumes 28.5 mW with total chip area of 2.4 mm(2) making it comparable with electrical synthesizers enabling large-scale deployment in applications such as low-cost optical spectroscopy, detection, sensing, and optical communication. (C) 2017 Optical Society of America