InP-based photonic integrated circuits for optical performance surveillance, signal conditioning and bandwidth management in DWDM transmission systems

摘要

This paper reports the design of InP-based monolithic photonic integrated circuits for performance surveillance and bandwidth management in DWDM transmission systems. It is based on a building block approach, which allows a large variety of optical components to be built from a few monolithically integrable elements, by using only one-step epitaxial growth and standard semiconductor fabrication technologies. These include: (ⅰ) polarization-compensated echelle diffractive grating (de)multiplexer, along with the elements of passive waveguide circuitry for coupling the light to and directing it through the InP-based photonic chip, and (ⅱ) single-mode vertically integrated waveguide active devices with detecting, attenuating and amplifying features, inserted in the (in)output channels of the planar (de)multiplexer. The paper presents the design and characterization examples of these elements and discusses the related integrated components for controlling / manipulating the DWDM optical signals on a per frequency basis.