An electroabsorption (EA) modulator array using a double optical-pass (DP) configuration has been developed to obtain high-speed modulation in parallel. Feeding electrical signals from the highly reflective side of the modulator eliminated component assembly problems with lenses and microwave feeder lines. Passive waveguide integration enabled wafers to be cleaved with very short absorbers. The degradation in frequency response was theoretically calculated to be <0. 2 dB compared to that of EA modulators without a passive waveguide. A common upper doping layer in the absorber and passive waveguide regions was introduced to attain high product throughput due to good epitaxial flatness and processing. The integrated 4-channels multiquantum well DP EA modulator array demonstrated high overall performance for a wavelength range from 1545 to 1558 nm. It features a drive voltage of 2 V for 10 dB attenuation, an insertion loss of 12 dB, and 4 channels17 GHz bandwidths for each channel, with low -20 dB crosstalk between adjacent waveguides.

Polarization insensitive discrete electroabsorption modulators have been designed as an optical gating device. It reveals the first finding, to our knowledge, that the ratio of the optical confinement factor (Γ) to the differential of the values (ΔΓ) between TE and TM polarized lights decides polarization dependence of attenuation. The ratio ΔΓ/Γ is significantly reduced by increasing core thickness. Large optical confinement structures combining a thick InGaAsP bulk absorption layer and polyimide-buried mesa-ridge waveguide have fabricated. The ratio ΔΓ/Γ of the high-mesa structure was estimated to be less than 0.05 in the gain-region of an erbium-doped fiber amplifier (EDFA), which enable us extremely low polarization sensitivity less than 1 dB up to 20 dB extinction. Proper waveguide length of the structure allowed low insertion loss ( 9.3 dB), small loss-change ( 1.8 dB) and sufficient modulation depth ( 30 dB) simultaneously in the EDFA's gain region. The low-mesa structure provided low insertion loss around 7 dB with small deviation in the wavelength region. High modulation band-width and a polarization-insensitive optical gating waveform have also demonstrated.

Passive optical network topology has been widely adopted in access networks due to its low-cost and yet flexible network structure. To further promote the passive optical networks, the cost reduction of optical modules is critical. Relatively expensive combination of a conventional index-coupled distributed feedback laser diode (IC-DFB-LD) and an optical isolator is commonly used for passive optical networks with transmission distance more than 30 km. Although gain-coupled DFB-LDs (GC-DFB-LD) have been widely investigated in the hope of eliminating the isolator in optical modules, their limited output power keeps them from practical use in passive optical networks. In this paper, we describe the development of 1.31 µm and 1.49 µm GC-DFB-LDs with high output power and optical feed back tolerance for isolator-free optical modules in access networks. The relative intensity noise (RIN) degradation was well suppressed below -120 dB/Hz at -8 dB optical feedback in the temperatures range from 0 to 85 from both 1.31 µm and 1.49 µm GC-DFB-LDs. Optical feedback tolerance of 1.31 µm and 1.49 µm GC-DFB-LDs were improved by more than 6 dB and 4 dB as compared with conventional IC-DFB-LDs. Dispersion power penalty after over 30 km transmission at 1.25 Gbps were achieved less than 0.3 dB and 0.7 dB under -15 dB optical feedback conditions. The proposed 1.31 µm GC-DFB-LD prototypes experimentally demonstrated 14 mW output power with over 5,000-hour operation at 85. Our devices are found to fully complying IEEE 802.3ah standard and seem to be promising for the low-cost optical modules in long-reach access network applications. The details of the device structure as well as transmission experiments are also reported.