  Advanced silicon photonic technologies enable integrated optical sensing and
communication (IOSAC) in real time for the emerging application requirements of
simultaneous sensing and communication for next-generation networks. Here, we
propose and demonstrate the IOSAC system on the silicon nitride (SiN) photonics
platform. The IOSAC devices based on microring resonators are capable of
monitoring the variation of analytes, transmitting the information to the
terminal along with the modulated optical signal in real-time, and replacing
bulk optics in high-precision and high-speed applications. By directly
integrating SiN ring resonators with optical communication networks,
simultaneous sensing and optical communication are demonstrated by an optical
signal transmission experimental system using especially filtering amplified
spontaneous emission spectra. The refractive index (RI) sensing ring with a
sensitivity of 172 nm/RIU, a figure of merit (FOM) of 1220, and a detection
limit (DL) of 8.2*10-6 RIU is demonstrated. Simultaneously, the 1.25 Gbps
optical on-off-keying (OOK) signal is transmitted at the concentration of
different NaCl solutions, which indicates the bit-error-ratio (BER) decreases
with the increase in concentration. The novel IOSAC technology shows the
potential to realize high-performance simultaneous biosensing and communication
in real time and further accelerate the development of IoT and 6G networks.
