Highly integrated 1.55 μm analog transmitter for high speed (15 GHz), high dynamic range analog transmission

In this work we demonstrate the integration of linear electro-absorption (EA) lumped-element modulator, a semiconductor amplifier (SOA) and a distributed feedback (DFB) laser, resulting in high analog performance from a compact and highly integrated module. The EA modulator is monolithically-integrated on the same chip with an SOA resulting in cost-effective and high fiber-coupled optical power >10 dBm. The resulting module exhibits robust performance over temperature, frequency and bias and is telco-qualifiable. Some operating characteristics of the module are spur-free dynamic range (SFDR) of 108 dB-Hz²3/, 15 GHz bandwidth, relative intensity noise (RIN) of -159 dB/Hz, as well as constant and high SFDR over >1 V bias range, over 45 °C variation in chip temperature and over 18 GHz frequency.