Widely tunable single-chip transceiver for 10 Gb/s wavelength conversion

Wavelength conversion is an essential function in wavelength-division-multiplexing (WDM) optical networks, as it enables better utilization of bandwidth and reduces blocking probabilities. This work presents, for the first time, a fully integrated transceiver solution to wavelength conversion in which all microwave signals are confined on a single InP chip. This device architecture, referred to as a photocurrent-driven wavelength converter (PD-WC), is particularly attractive due to the potential for low power dissipation, high bandwidth, data regeneration, and no optical output filtering requirement unlike many all-optical implementations. Here, a termination resistor and DC-blocking capacitor are integrated with an electroabsorption modulator (EAM) based PD-WC such that only DC biases are necessary for device operation and no microwave signal must travel off the chip. This widely-tunable device demonstrates error free 10 Gb/s conversion and utilizes both a simple, single-regrowth fabrication and a simple bias configuration.