Monolithically Integrated 8:1 SOA Gate Switch With Large Extinction Ratio and Wide Input Power Dynamic Range

A monolithic 8:1 SOA gate switch that integrates an 8-ch SOA gate array, an 8:1 optical coupler, and a 1-ch SOA gate was developed for use in a large scale optical packet switching system. A 250-mum-long compact field-flattened coupler (FFC) produces a very small channel-imbalance together with a compact total chip size of 3.0 times 1.0 mm. The device exhibited a large ON-state gain of >14.3 dB and a small total gain deviation of 3.0 dB. The optimized passive waveguide structure successfully suppressed the stray light, which resulted in a record-high ON-OFF extinction ratio of >70 dB. We used a thin tensile-strained multi-quantum well (MQW) active layer which can attain high-saturation output power, low noise, and polarization insensitivity for SOA gates. Due to the coexistence of a high saturation output power and a low noise figure, the device exhibited a very wide input power dynamic range of 20.5 dB for a 10-Gb/s NRZ signal.