Optical transceiver formed with fiber-embedded lightwave circuit on silicon substrate

The growth of telecommunications data traffic makes increased bandwidth imperative in access networks, as providers must offer subscribers video transmission capabilities. The current several hundred kb/s to several Mb/s currently-available is inadequate, as forecasts for 50 Mb/s by the year 2000, 155 Mb/s and possibly 622 Mb/s by 2005 are commonplace, while rates up to 2.5 Gb/s may be necessary to include video-on-demand services. The concept of the fiber-embedded lightwave circuit is based on the LD being integrated with the associated driving circuits, and being surface-mounted on a Si substrate. The use of Si as the substrate is advantageous, as there exists techniques to use a V-shaped groove etched in Si to hold in place the optical fiber, which is the optical transmission media for this device.