Photonic integrated circuits (PICs) are required for future optical communication systems, because various optical components need to be compactly integrated in one-chip configurations with a small number of optical alignment points. Bandgap energy controlled selective metal organic vapor phase epitaxy (MOVPE) is a breakthrough technique for the fabrication of PICs because this technique enables the simultaneous formation of waveguides for various optical components in one-step growth. Directly formed waveguides on a mask-patterned substrate can be obtained without using conventional mesa-etching of the semiconductor layers. The waveguide width is precisely controlled by the mask pattern. Therefore, high device uniformity and yield are expected. Since we proposed and demonstrated this technique in 1991, various PICs have been reported. Using electroabsorption modulator integrated distributed feedback laser diodes, 2.5 Gb/s-550 km transmission experiments have been successfully conducted. Another advantage of the selective MOVPE technique is the capability to form narrow waveguide layers. We have demonstrated a polarization-insensitive semiconductor optical amplifier that consists of a selectively formed narrow (less than 1 µm wide) bulk active layer. For a four-channel array, a chip gain of more than 20 dB and a gain difference between TE and TM inputs of less than 1 dB were obtained. We have also reported an optical switch matrix and an optical transceiver PIC for access optical networks. By using a low-loss optical waveguide, a 0 dB fiber-to-fiber gain for the 14 switch matrix and 0 dBm fiber output power from the 1.3 µm transceiver PIC were obtained. In this paper, the selective MOVPE technique and its applications to various kinds of PICs are discussed.

Photonic switching and coherent optical transmission would be key technologies for realizing future all optical broadband wide-area networks. This paper reports results of studies on integrating photonic switching systems and coherent optical transmission technologies. Introducing coherent optical transmission technologies to photonic space-division switching systems will lead to some excellent features, including line handling capacity expansion, transmission span increase and integration capability with coherent WDM/FDM broadcasting systems. Photonic wavelength-division (WD) switching systems with large number of WD channels would also be possible, with coherent optical transmission technologies. Space-division switching experiments in a 100 Mb/s optical FSK transmission system were carried out using LiNbO3 photonic switch matrices. Receiver sensitivity improvement of 7.5 dB was observed in the transmission experiments through a photonic switch matrix and long SMFs (22 km, 100 km). This allows more cascaded connection for photonic switch matrices in a photonic switching system. It was also shown that crosstalk component can be rejected at the receiver by introducing channel separation greater than 3 GHz, even when the crosstalk power is ten times larger than the desired signal. From these experimental results, a photonic SD switching system whose line capacity exceeding 500-lines and whose transmission line length was over 20 km, would be expected.