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Publication
ICTON 2011
Conference paper
Scaling limits for optical interconnects: Directly modulated versus externally modulated links
Abstract
We establish a lower bound on the energy-per-bit required for transmitting information using a photonic channel. We include in our analysis the energy required to convert information from the electronic to the photonic domain and back. We investigate links that employ a directly modulated laser as well as an external modulator. We show that the power dissipation of the channel also imposes a bound on the bandwidth density. © 2011 IEEE.