Stokes Vector Communications Using Silicon Photonic Integrated Circuits

Multi-dimensional direct detection (DD) can increase the channel rate without the use of coherent detection, compared with traditional one-dimensional intensity modulation with DD. Recently, there is increasing interest in utilizing Stokes vector (SV) receiver, which is a DD technique with the capability to track the polarization changes in fibers and decode signals in multiple dimensions. Here we review a highly compact and monolithically integrated silicon photonics SV receiver, which was used for the direct detection of a 128-Gb/s 16-ary quadrature amplitude modulated signal.