High-power electroabsorption modulator for radio over fibre system

Abstract

An electroabsorption modulator using an intra-step quantum well (IQW) active region is fabricated for a radio over fibre system. The strain-compensated InGaAsP/InGaAsP IQW shows good material quality and improved modulation properties, high extinction ratio efficiency (10 dB V−1) and low capacitance (<0.42 pF), with which high frequency (>15 GHz) can be obtained. High-speed measurement under high-power excitation shows no power saturation up to an excitation power of 21 dBm. To our knowledge, the input optical power is the highest reported for a multi-quantum well EAM without a heat sink.

A traveling-wave electroabsorption modulator with a large optical cavity and intrastep quantum wells

“…We can see that the RF gain increases linearly with the optical input power with a slope efficiency of around 2, up to the input power limit of 21 dBm. This is the same as the reported highest saturation power of the EAM [14].…”