40-Gb/s Widely Tunable Transceivers

We present the first monolithic widely tunable 40-Gb/s transceivers. The devices integrate sampled grating distributed Bragg reflector (SG-DBR) lasers, quantum-well electroabsorption modulators (EAM), low-confinement semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOA), and uni-traveling carrier (UTC) photodiodes for state-of-the-art light generation, modulation, amplification, and detection. A relatively simple high-flexibility fabrication scheme combining quantum-well intermixing (QWI) and blanket metal-organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) regrowth was used to integrate components with performance rivaling optimized discrete devices. The SG-DBR/EAM transmitters demonstrate 30 nm of tuning, 39-GHz bandwidth, low-drive voltage, and low power penalty 40-Gb/s transmission through 2.3 km of fiber. The SOA/UTC photodetector receivers provide 23-28 dB of gain, saturation powers up to 18.6 dBm, and -20.2 dBm of chip-coupled sensitivity at 40 Gb/s. By connecting the transmitters and receivers off-chip, we demonstrate 40-Gb/s wavelength conversion