Monolithically integrated WDM channel selectors on InP substrates

An introduction to InP-based generic integration technology

“…Early examples of complex InP-based photonic integrated circuits (PICs) 18 are a WDM source by Koren [3], integrating three lasers consisting of a semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) and a tunable Bragg Grating Reflector, with a power combiner and a booster SOA on a single chip; a grating-based receiver by Cremer [4], integrating an Echelle grating demultiplexer with more than 30 detectors; a 4 × 4 cross-bar switch by Duthie [5], integrating 16 reverse-Δβ switches; a switch array by Gustavsson [6], integrating 24 SOA gate switches with 24 1 × 2 couplers; and a polarization diversity heterodyne receiver by Kaiser [7], integrating a DBR-type local oscillator laser with polarization mode splitters, polarization mode filters, 3 dB combiners, detector diodes in balanced configuration, junction FETs and load resistors.…”

Moore's law in photonics

“…It started with the publication of the first AWG by Smit [7] in 1988, followed by Takahashi (1990) [8] and Dragone (1991) [9]. After the invention of the AWG a number of AWG-based devices with increasing circuit complexity was reported: WDM receivers with 5-10 components by Amersfoort (1993) [10], [11] and Steenbergen (1996) [12]; WDM lasers with 10-20 components by Zirngibl ( ,1996 [13,14] and Staring (1996) [15]; WDM channel selectors with 10-20 components by [16], Ishii (1998) [17], Menezo (1999) [18], Mestric (2000) [19] and Kikuchi (2001) [20] and a crossconnect 1 Several metrics have been proposed for measuring chip complexity. We use a simple but coarse approach in which we count the number of basic components like AWGs, MMIs, SOAs, detectors and modulators.…”

<title>Semiconductor photonic devices for WDM applications</title>

“…We demonstrated WDM channel selector which is monolithically integrated on InP substrate for the reduction of the device size [24]. The structure of the channel selector is shown in Fig.…”

“…Figure 23 shows the photograph of the fabricated SIPAS. The SIPAS is a Sagnac interferometer with a parallel amplifiers structure (PAS), which is a Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI) having polarization insensitive SOAs in each arm, and was fabricated monolithically by butt-coupling the high-mesa and buried waveguides [24]. Tensile-strained bulk InGaAsP was utilized for the SOA active layer.…”