Baudrate- and Reach-Flexible All-Optical Equalization with a Co-Packaged Photonic Reservoir and Receiver

Sarah Masaad; Jakob Declercq; Stijn Sackesyn; Ruben Van Assche; Hasan Salmanian; Andrzej Polatynski; Dimitrios Chatzitheocharis; Konstantinos Vyrsokinos; Tatiana Buriakova; Christophe Caillaud; Stylianos Sygletos; Xin Yin; Peter Bienstman

arXiv · 2604.20504

Baudrate- and Reach-Flexible All-Optical Equalization with a Co-Packaged Photonic Reservoir and Receiver

Sarah Masaad·Jakob Declercq·Stijn Sackesyn·Ruben Van Assche·Hasan Salmanian·Andrzej Polatynski·Dimitrios Chatzitheocharis·Konstantinos Vyrsokinos·Tatiana Buriakova·Christophe Caillaud·Stylianos Sygletos·Xin Yin·Peter Bienstman

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Abstract

Intensity-modulation direct-detection links must support increasing baudrates and transmission distances while operating under stringent power and cost constraints. However, as data rates and reaches increase, chromatic dispersion induces stronger inter-symbol interference and, after direct detection, frequency-selective fading, thus requiring increasingly powerful equalization. In conventional receivers, this translates into digital equalization whose complexity scales unfavorably with data rate. Photonic-domain equalization offers a hardware-based alternative that operates naturally at line rate and mitigates frequency fading. However, prior demonstrations were not readily adaptable for different rate and/or reach operation. In this paper, we experimentally demonstrate all-optical equalization across 10-46 Gbaud and 10-250 km SSMF in the C-band enabled solely through retraining of the readout layer, achieving up to four orders of magnitude BER improvement over standard DSP equalization. The demonstrator comprises a 16-node spatially multiplexed reservoir, programmable on-chip readout, and co-packaged receiver front-end. To our knowledge, this is the first co-packaged photonic reservoir receiver and the first demonstration of simultaneous baudrate- and reach-flexible equalization using a fixed-topology integrated photonic circuit.

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Sarah Masaad, Jakob Declercq, Stijn Sackesyn, Ruben Van Assche, Hasan Salmanian, Andrzej Polatynski, Dimitrios Chatzitheocharis, Konstantinos Vyrsokinos, Tatiana Buriakova, Christophe Caillaud, Stylianos Sygletos, Xin Yin, Peter Bienstman. 2026-04-22. Baudrate- and Reach-Flexible All-Optical Equalization with a Co-Packaged Photonic Reservoir and Receiver. https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.20504

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