Compact Verilog-A Modeling of Silicon Traveling-Wave Modulator for Hybrid CMOS Photonic Circuit Design

A compact Verilog-A model of silicon-based junction traveling-waveMach-Zehnder modulator (MZM) is developed for hybrid CMOS and photonic system-level simulation in Cadence environment. Critical device functions such as the voltage dependent change of refractive index, small-signal RLGC parameters for the MZM arms are extracted from the photonic device characterization from OpSIS foundry. Thermo-optical coefficient is also considered in the model. Simulation results including electro-optic S21 is characterized for the phase modulator's bandwidth. Also, transient MZM operation with non-return to zero (NRZ) data transmission at 10 Gb/s and 20 Gb/s rates are demonstrated.