Use of a system simulator to study the influence of InP-HEMT excess gate current on 40 Gbits/s fiber optic system performances

The optical system performances are strongly related to the micro-optoelectronic device parameters inserted into the transmitter and receiver blocks. These blocks contain InP photonic and GaAs or InP electron devices (principally HEMTs or FETs). It as been previously demonstrated that the hybrid or monolithic integration used to assemble these devices (in OEICs) suffer from various intrinsic and process dependent parasitic effects. It could be very interesting to analyze the impact of these misfunctionings or the optical link performances taking into account the network requests. The evaluation of device parameters by means of breadboard (testbed) equipments is time consuming and cost effective, especially if iterative measurements are required. The emergence of system simulators drastically makes easier this evaluation. In this contribution, we report results on the use of an optical system simulator (COMSIS) to study the impact of one of the OEICs misfunctionings on optical system performances.