Why High-Speed Interconnects Need Unified Electrical-Optical Simulation
Hyperscale data centers are racing toward 800Gbps, 1.6Tbps and even 3.2Tbps optical links, driven by AI infrastructure and high-performance computing. At these rates, the line between traditional SerDes design and photonics IC testing blurs: electrical channels, optical modulators, fibers and receivers all interact as one tightly coupled system. Yet many teams still rely on fragmented workflows, using separate tools for electrical and optical domains and manually stitching results together. That fragmentation makes cross-domain signal integrity issues hard to identify and even harder to fix late in the cycle. Electrical optical simulation must now span the entire signal path, from transmitter equalization through photonic components to the receive-side DSP. A unified EOE simulation environment directly addresses this need by enabling consistent signal path modeling across domains, allowing engineers to explore architectures and performance tradeoffs in one coherent, repeatable flow.
Inside EOE Simulation: Modeling the Full Electrical-Optical-Electrical Path
The new EOE simulation capability in ADS 2026 models the complete electrical-to-optical-to-electrical chain within a single design environment. Rather than switching between a SerDes design tool and a separate photonic simulator, engineers can now co-simulate digital channels and photonics IC behavior together. The workflow links Keysight’s High Speed Digital environment with Keysight Photonic Designer so the same project covers driver circuitry, modulators, fiber, wavelength-division multiplexing elements and receivers. This holistic electrical optical simulation includes bidirectional channel modeling, capturing both forward and backward propagation in full-duplex optical links. It also supports multi-wavelength links, so designers of 800G and 1.6T architectures can observe how nonlinearities and crosstalk accumulate across lanes. By treating the entire route as a unified EOE channel, the tool enables earlier, more accurate evaluation of real-world effects that only emerge when both domains are modeled simultaneously.
Eliminating Design Fragmentation for SerDes and Photonics Teams
Legacy workflows typically isolate SerDes design from photonics IC testing. Signal path modeling starts in an electrical tool, then jumps into a photonics environment, with spreadsheets and scripts used to hand off parameters or waveforms. Each handoff risks error, version drift and lost context. EOE simulation consolidates these steps so SerDes and photonics engineers share a common schematic, data model and results database. Electrical channel and optical envelope simulation are co-simulated, removing the need to re-create conditions or approximate cross-domain behavior. The unified approach streamlines architecture exploration, allowing rapid iteration on decisions such as modulation formats, equalization strategies, and optical launch power. It also creates a single source of truth for system-level signal integrity, reducing duplicated work across teams and enabling more efficient collaboration on complex mixed-signal, mixed-domain designs.
Improving Accuracy and Speed of Mixed-Domain Validation
End-to-end EOE simulation improves both accuracy and turnaround for validating high-speed links. Because electrical and optical domains are modeled together, engineers can detect signal integrity issues that only appear under combined noise, jitter and nonlinear conditions. The workflow supports noise modeling across domains and captures modulator bias-dependent and large-signal nonlinear effects before hardware testing. This reduces dependence on late-stage lab discovery and expensive respins. Multi-wavelength support lets designers assess how nonlinearities impact per-wavelength performance in wavelength-division multiplexed interconnects, an essential step as data rates scale. At the same time, validation speed improves because engineers no longer need to export intermediate results or run separate correlation exercises between tools. The result is a more realistic picture of system-level margin earlier in the design cycle, enabling faster convergence on robust architectures for next-generation optical interconnects.
From System Architecture to Photonic IC Detail in One Flow
Beyond system-level EOE simulation, the ADS 2026 ecosystem supports design work from architecture down to component-level optimization. At the circuit level, process design kit (PDK) support allows accurate representation of photonic ICs as they will be fabricated, ensuring that system simulations are grounded in realistic device behavior. Integration with Keysight RSoft at the component level lets teams refine waveguides, modulators and other photonic building blocks while preserving consistency with the higher-level signal path modeling. This vertical integration means that changes at the device level can be evaluated immediately in the context of SerDes performance and link budget. For engineers working on advanced SerDes design, photonics IC testing and multi-wavelength link development, a unified EOE simulation stack finally removes the historical divide between domains and offers a continuous, traceable path from concept to validated implementation.