1. UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO Nortel Networks Institute University of Waterloo

2. UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO High Performance Semiconductor Optical Amplifiers: Enabling All-optical Circuits Simarjeet Singh Saini Nanophotonics and Integrated Optoelectronics Group University of Waterloo UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO

3. Semiconductor Amplifiers and Lasers

4. UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO Outline Introduction SOA performance in DWDM systems Non-Uniform Current Distribution SOA as non-linear elements for Optical Logic Optical Header Recognition and Packet Routing Monolithic Integration Conclusion 4

5. UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO Introduction to SOAs SOA Chip Angled Facet Ridge or Buried Waveguide AR Coated (R < 10 -5 ) Typical Performance Specifications Gain: 10-20 dB Saturation Output Power (Psat): 9-12 dBm Noise Figure: 7-9 dB Polarization Dependent Gain (PDG): 1.0 dB Gain flatness: 3 dB

6. UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO SOA Applications WDM DEMUX WDM MUX

7. UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO SOA vs. EDFA SOA

8. UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO 8-Channel DWDM Experiments

9. UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO 8-Channel Spectrum FWM Signals

10. UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO 10 Gbps Results

11. UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO WDM Performance

12. UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO Different Active Regions Active RegionEngineeringGain, P sat Comments BulkVery EasyHigh, Low Have low saturation Power compared to the QW’s Most of the commercial SOA’s are Bulk Alternate compressive and tensile strain QW’s EasyHigh, Low Half the carriers are not used at one time; NF will be High Tensile Strained QW’s Difficult (get the right balance) High but at lower wavelengths (1.5  m), High Can be used for S-band; but not for C- and L-band δ-strained QW’sDifficultMedium, Medium Easy to grow and reproduce Distortions in carrier wavefunctions lead to reduced gain and saturation power Large transparency current increases NF

13. UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO δ-Strained Concept

14. UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO SOA Results: PI

15. UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO SOA Results: Polarization Sensitive

16. UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO Non-uniform Current Distribution for Improved Device Performance

17. UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO Concept

18. UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO Approach

19. UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO Resistance Measurements

20. UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO Effect on Saturation Power Psat increases by 3.5 dB The linearity of the curve also improves

21. UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO Multi-contact Topology

22. UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO Performance Improvements

23. UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO Noise Figure Improvement

24. UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO SOAs as Non-linear Elements

25. UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO Non-linear Effects in SOA Cross Gain Modulation Cross Phase Modulation Four Wave Mixing Wavelength Conversion 2R/3R Regeneration Optical Logic: AND, NAND Optical Switching

26. UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO Packet Routing

27. UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO Address Recognition

28. UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO Sagnac Gate for Optical AND SOA

29. UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO Input Bits

30. UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO Logic Outputs

31. UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO Control Electronics

32. UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO Output from InGaAs Detector

33. UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO Integration and SOA driver

34. UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO Eye diagrams for Cascaded SOAs

35. UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO Packet Transmission All SOA’s turned on One out of 3 SOA’s off

36. UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO PARC TM : A Platform for Monolithic Integration of Photonics Devices

37. UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO Approach

38. UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO Resonantly Coupled Tapers

39. UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO Basic PARC Platform

40. UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO Experimental Results

41. UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO 3-dB Lossless Splitters

42. UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO 3-dB Lossless Splitters

43. UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO 2x2 Crosspoint Switches

44. UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO 2x2 Crosspoint Switch

45. UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO Conclusion SOA performance continues to improve Higher saturation power extends linear operating range Minimal non-linear distortion/crosstalk for ave. output power < Psat – 6 dB SOA saturation power of 16 dBm with NF less than 6 dB demonstrated SOA can allow for all-optical logic Further Integration of SOA with photonic devices should allow for highly functional modules Future: Low cost application FTTH Coarse and D-WDM Ultra-fast optical signal processing and Integration