InP-based directly modulated monolithic integrated few-mode transmitter

Abstract

A monolithic integrated few-mode transmitter comprising of two directly modulated distributed feedback lasers and a multimode-interference-coupler-based mode converter-multiplexer with 66% mode conversion efficiency was designed and demonstrated. A fundamental TE 0 mode and a first-order TE 1 mode were successfully generated from the transmitter, with the output power of 4 and 5.5 mW at a pump current of around 150 mA, respectively, at the common output port. The small signal modulation bandwidth of the TE 0 and TE 1 channels reached 17.4 and 14.7 GHz, respectively. Error-free 2 × 10-Gbit∕s direct modulation of the two-mode transmitter was demonstrated, with a power penalty of 4.3 dB between the TE 0 mode and the TE 1 mode at the bit error rate of 1 × 10 −9 .

InP-based monolithically integrated few-mode devices

“…A reconfigurable photonic integrated mode C/M/D was proposed and demonstrated by Polytechnic University of Milan in 2016 [16] . The schematic device structure is shown in Fig.…”

“…However, the difficulty in efficient lasing and amplification in the silicon platform remain as a problem for a siliconbased fully integrated few-mode transmitter. While the InP platform, with the advantage in the active and passive components integration, can offer the integration possibility of not only the passive few-mode C/M/Ds [9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16] but also the lasers and amplifiers with the passive few-mode components. Fully functional integrated few-mode transmitters can be readily…”