Nonlinear distortions in silicon microring resonator filters and their impact on integrated photonic ADCs

We present a dynamic model based on temporal coupled-mode theory to model microring resonators considering silicon nonlinearities. By taking into account the vectorial nature of the optical modes propagating in strongly confining silicon waveguides, we introduce effective areas for two-photon absorption (TPA) and free-carrier distribution in order to adapt the rate equation describing the generation of free-carriers due to TPA and Sorefs equations for silicon waveguides. The performance of optical systems utilizing microring resonators can be degraded due to its nonlinear response. In this paper, we investigate the impact of silicon nonlinearities in microring resonators on the effective number of bits (ENOB) in integrated photonic analog-to-converters (ADCs). This is done by analyzing the nonlinear response of a first-order microring drop filter to a modulated optical pulse train. The dependence of the nonlinear response of the microring resonator, embodied in the input pulse energy vs output pulse energy, and the maximum ENOB on various filter and input pulse train parameters is analyzed by varying the finesse, microring waveguide geometry, modulation index, and average pulse energy.