The University of British Columbia

3 Credits

ELEC 506

Course Structure/Operation

This is a one semester course involving lectures, projects and exams.

Pre-requisites:

Basic core undergraduate courses in electronics, i.e, familiarity with CMOS and circuit analysis, and computer-aided design tools for circuit design such as Cadence.

Learning Objectives

By the end of the course, it is expected that students will be able to:

• Understand the basics of silicon photonics and optoelectronics
• Analyze and design CMOS circuits in particular for photonics applications
• Design a silicon-photonic CMOS circuit, including necessary test structures
• Learn Cadence and Lumerical tools

Detailed Course Outline

• Overview: Silicon photonics enables the fabrication of CMOS circuits for optical communications, sensors, and biomedical devices.  Example components include modular and laser drivers, trans-impedance amplifiers, automatic gain control and temperature control circuits.
• Topics:

- Common circuit blocks: opamps, references, stability, etc.

- Compact models for optical devices: phase shifter (pin, thermal, etc.), ring modulator, detector

- Optical Link budget analysis

- Receivers: Basic concepts, limiting receiver, linear receiver, Trans-impedance Amplifier (TIA) Design; Limiting Amplifiers; Input offset cancellation; AGC techniques

- Transmitters - Modulator drivers, termination, bias control

- Laser drivers

- Tuning circuits

- Packaging considerations - wirebond/bump and package parasitics

- Fabrication technology description, design rules, process details

- Experimental methodoloty

- Clock and data recovery

• Computer-aided design (CAD) tools will be used for the modelling and design of CMOS circuits.  These CAD tools include circuit stimulatin and layout (Cadence) and photonics design (Lmerical)