Monolithically Integrated Transmitters for 1.5um Optical Communication Applications

摘要

Multimedia services, cable and antenna television (CATV), high definition television (HDTV), and computer links have ushered into every aspect of our lives and have become virtually indispensible. Large amounts of data transmission through the information highway have and will indoubtedly continue to benefit us by improving the way of life. The demands on a network which can accommodate the entire communication traffic in a cost effective manner have drawn considerable attention and tremendous effort has been exerted on this issue. Single-mode optical fibers widely deployed in today's telecommunication networks have the potential to carry 30 Tb/s. However, it is largely underutilized by even the most dense telecommunication system (2.5 Gb/s) commercially available at the present time. Unlike traditional time- division- multiplexing (TDM) techniques, wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) techniques offer a cost effective utilization of the fiber bandwidth directly in the wavelength domain, rather than in the time domain. Furthermore, the wavelengths can be used to perform functions as routing and switching, which are attractive for realization of all-optical transparent network layers in the future networks.