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The measurement of distance plays an integral part in many aspects of modern societies. In this paper an integrated mode-locked laser on a chip is used for distance measurement based on mode-resolved interferometry. The emission from the on-chip source with a repetition rate of 2.5 GHz and a spectral bandwidth of 3 nm is coupled into a Michelson interferometer. The interferometer output is recorded as a spectral interferogram, which is captured in a single camera image. The images are analyzed using Hilbert transform to extract the distance. The distance derived shows a deviation of 6 \mum from the reference, for a distance up to 25 mm. We also demonstrate interferometry with repetition frequency sweep which can also be used with the source. Performance is expected to be better in the near future with the rapid developments in the field of on-chip laser sources which are demonstrating larger spectral widths and coherence lengths.

Low-excess-loss arrayed waveguide gratings are enabled by unique application of deep UV lithography in InP integrated photonics through reduced feature sizes and, more specifically, well-resolved inter-waveguide gap dimensions. Submicrometer wafer-flatness is shown to be required to achieve the critical dimension uniformity better than 10 nm on 3-in substrates. Arrayed waveguide grating devices were fabricated and the effect of inter-waveguide gap scaling on the excess losses was measured and compared to simulations. Excess losses down to 0.15 dB were demonstrated to be lower than predicted with the 2-D simulations. The tapering of the etch depth inside the gaps due to the lag effect of the etch process may explain the improvements.

The standardization of photonic integration processes for InP has led to versatile and easily accessible generic integration platforms. The generic integration platforms enable the realization of a broad range of applications and lead to a dramatic cost reduction in the development costs of photonic integrated circuits (PICs). This paper addresses the SMART Photonics generic integration platform developments. The integration technology based on butt joint active-passive epitaxy is shown to achieve a platform without compromising the performance of the different components. The individual components or building blocks are described. A process design kit is established with a comprehensive dataset of simulation and layout information for the building blocks. Latest results on process development and optimization are demonstrated. A big step forward is achieved by applying high-resolution ArF lithography, which leads to increased performance for AWGs and a large increase in reproducibility and yield. The generic nature of the platform is demonstrated by analyzing a number of commercial multiproject wafer runs. It is clear that a large variety of applications is addressed with more than 200 designs from industry as well as academia. A number of examples of PICs are displayed to support this. Finally, the design flow is explained, with focus on layout-aware schematic-driven design flow that is required for complex circuits. It can be concluded that generic integration on InP is maturing fast and with the current developments and infrastructure it is the technology of choice for low cost, densely integrated PICs, ready for high-volume manufacturing.

Foundry services for photonic integration enable access to such technologies and facilitate fab-less businesses models. The technologies are sufficiently mature for proof-of-concept demonstrators, advanced prototypes, and two-medium small-volume production. Further improvement of the technology processes behind those services requires extensive research and development efforts in order to advance the foundry offerings and assure scalability, process control, and the yield required for volume production. A high-level automation of test and assembly processes in the PIC manufacturing chain is essential to improve statistical process control and scalability of all processes. These allow for early known-good-die identification, optimization of fabrication process window, improved yield, and volume production. In this paper we propose a standardized approach to chip layout that supports automated test and assembly processes already at the design phase. Moreover, we describe a modular test software framework based on open standards. Within this test framework, standard file formats for chip, equipment, and measurement description, and the open file formats for storage and exchange of data are described. This test framework is a part of the openEPDA initiative and enables test automation, user-defined testing, data analysis, exchangeability, and traceability across the full manufacturing chain from design to product.

Test, assembly and packaging processes substantially contribute to the overall production cost of photonic integrated circuits. Implementation of test processes across the full production chain is critical in order to deliver statistically significant data sets. These will allow for optimization of the fabrication process widows, early known-good-die selection, improved models in design tools and lead to improved yield, reduced cost and scalability which will open a path to volume production. Progress on developments of open access test infrastructure at our laboratories and open standard test framework will be presented.

An array of monolithic wide-tunable lasers is integrated using selective area growth to shift the bandgap of their gain section. A gap-free tuning is demonstrated from the combination of the tuning ranges of the lasers, and single-mode operation is verified.

Selective area growth is used for the first time in the TU/e generic integration platform to modify independently the bandgap of active sections. A chip combining 4 tunable lasers with shifted wavelength ranges has been fabricated. A 96 nm wide tuning range is demonstrated.

Access to fabrication of photonic integrated circuits is enabled via multi-project wafer runs offered by foundries. Such services open a path for proof-of-concept demonstrators and advanced prototypes. However, the technology processes behind those services need extensive developments in order to be scalable and suitable for volume production. Those developments are in a vast part related to test, assembly and packaging across the full PIC manufacturing chain. Standardization and automation of the test methods and equipment is essential for better statistical process control and scalability. When implemented, these will allow for early known-good-die identification, optimization of fabrication process window, improved yield and volume production.The challenges related to PIC testing will be discussed and current developments in our labs towards standardization and automation of test methods from a design phase to system level functional module evaluation will be presented.

We present our work on the realization of integrated III/V-on-silicon integrated mode-locked lasers. We demonstrate 1 GHz repetition rate mode-locked lasers with a spectrum spanning more than a 1 THz.

ArF deep UV (193 nm) lithography was successfully applied to fabricate Arrayed Waveguide Gratings in generic Indium Phosphide technology. The sub-dB transmission losses demonstrate the advantages of scaling down the minimum feature size to 100 nm.

We report a novel type of monolithically integrated tunable semiconductor laser. The tuning is achieved by three intracavity Mach–Zehnder interferometers, realized in passive waveguides and using voltage-controlled electro-optic phase modulators requiring only four control voltages. The potential of the design is demonstrated by a realized laser system that shows an optical linewidth of 363 kHz, output power of 3 mW, and a record tuning range of 74.3 nm. Such a continuous wavelength span is in excess of any monolithic semiconductor laser reported up to date. Precision of the tuning mechanism is demonstrated by a scan over a 0.89-GHz-wide absorption line of acetylene. The laser design is suitable for a number of applications, including gas spectroscopy, telecommunication, and optical coherence tomography. The laser has been fabricated in a multi-project wafer run on an indium phosphide-based generic photonic foundry platform and demonstrates the potential of these technology platforms.

Picosecond-pulse III-V-on-silicon mode-locked lasers based on linear and ring extended cavity geometries are presented. In passive mode-locked operation a 12 kHz -3dB linewidth of the fundamental RF tone at 4.7 GHz is obtained for the linear cavity geometry and 16 kHz for the ring cavity geometry. Stabilization of the repetition rate of these devices using hybrid mode-locking is also demonstrated.

RF frequency downconverters are of key importance in communication satellites. Classically, this is implemented using an electronic mixer. In this paper we explore the use of photonic technology to realize the same functionality. The potential advantages of such an approach compared to the classical microwave solutions are that it is lighter weight, has lower power consumption and can be made smaller if photonic technology is used. An additional advantage is the fact that the optical local oscillator (LO) reference can easily be transported over longer distances than the equivalent LO signal in the microwave domain due to the large bandwidth and low loss and dispersion of optical fiber. Another big advantage is that one can envision the use of short pulse trains as the LO - starting off from a sinusoidal RF reference - in order to exploit subsampling. Subsampling avoids the need for high frequency LO references, which is especially valuable if a downconversion over several 10s of GHz is required. In this paper we present the operation principle of such a photonic frequency downconverter and describe the performance of the developed micro-photonic building blocks required for this functionality. These micro-photonic building blocks are implemented on a III-V semiconductor-on-silicon photonic platform. The components include a micro-photonic hybridly modelocked laser, a 30GHz electroabsorption modulator and an intermediate frequency (1.5GHz) photodetector.

Optical frequency combs emerge as a promising technology that enables highly sensitive, near-real-time spectroscopy with a high resolution. The currently available comb generators are mostly based on bulky and high-cost femtosecond lasers for dense comb generation (line spacing in the range of 100 MHz to 1 GHz). However, their integrated and low-cost counterparts, which are integrated semiconductor mode-locked lasers, are limited by their large comb spacing, small number of lines and broad optical linewidth. In this study, we report a demonstration of a III-V-on-Si comb laser that can function as a compact, low-cost frequency comb generator after frequency stabilization. The use of low-loss passive silicon waveguides enables the integration of a long laser cavity, which enables the laser to be locked in the passive mode at a record-low 1 GHz repetition rate. The 12-nm 10-dB output optical spectrum and the notably small optical mode spacing results in a dense optical comb that consists of over 1400 equally spaced optical lines. The sub-kHz 10-dB radio frequency linewidth and the narrow longitudinal mode linewidth (

In this paper, we present the detailed characterization of a semiconductor ring passively mode-locked laser with a 20 GHz repetition rate that was realized as an indium phosphide based photonic integrated circuit (PIC). Various dynamical regimes as a function of operating conditions were explored in the spectral and time domain. A record bandwidth of the optical coherent comb from a quantum well based device of 11.5 nm at 3 dB and sub-picosecond pulse generation is demonstrated.

We report, to the best of our knowledge, the first demonstration of 320 Gb/s all-optical clock recovery and all-optical time de-multiplexing after 51 km transmission by exploiting single-quantum dash mode-locked laser diode (QD-MLLD). Based on injection locking of the QD-MLLD, the 40 GHz synchronized optical clock pulses were recovered from the 320 Gb/s with a pulse width of 1.9 ps and timing jitter of 135 fs, which allowed directly time de-multiplexing of 320-40 Gb/s without additional complex optoelectronic circuitry. The 320-40 Gb/s all-optical de-multiplexing was achieved with averaging a power penalty of 4.5 dB at BER of 1E-6.

In this study, we provide an experimental assessment of a quantum dash Fabry–Perot´ mode-locked laser for all-optical clock recovery using data streams at 40, 80, 160, and 320 Gb/s. The data streams at 80, 160, and 320 Gb/s are phase coherent signals featuring no spectral component at 40 GHz. The 40 GHz recovered optical clock signal is characterized in terms of phase noise, timing jitter, dynamic power range, and wavelength dependence for the different data rates. Our experiments demonstrate a recovered optical clock signal from a 320 Gb/s data stream with a timing jitter of 94 fs and wavelength detuned by 23 nm. In addition, the performance of the optical time division multiplexing receiver at 80 and 160 Gb/s data signals employing the recovered clock as a demultiplexing control signal and as a clock for the bit-error-rate tester (BERT) is evaluated by bit error rate measurements on the demultiplexed data signals.

Optical sensing offers unrivalled precision with real-time monitoring, but the complexity in implementing the optical sources has so far limited deployments to high value measurement systems. Innovations in photonic integration are beginning to enable breakthroughs in terms of cost, size and performance. Integrated sources and readouts can be created with large-scale semiconductor wafer production techniques. InP integrated photonics is able to combine best-in-class components including the lasers and amplifiers within one photonic chip. The chip-scale integration of complete circuits enables on-chip stabilisation and environmental corrections for further advances in measurement precision and at lower power consumption.

In this paper we introduce the III–V photonic integration platforms for emerging applications beyond telecommunications. Recent achievements in the InP generic and InP membrane platforms for wireless and sensing applications are reviewed. The realized chips show the great potential of the InP-based photonic integration due to its full functionality, high flexibility and high performance.

Generic photonic integration technology platforms allow for design and fabrication of large complexity application specific photonic integrated circuits. Monolithic active-passive integration on indium phosphide substrate naturally enables a reliable co-integration of optical gain elements and therefore on-chip realization of advanced laser systems. An overview of multi-wavelength sources in the form of photonic integrated circuits fabricated using such integration technology for applications in telecommunications, sensing, millimeter and terahertz generation will be given.

Progress on the development of a long wavelength (∼2 µm) generic monolithic photonic integration technology on indium phosphide substrate and a novel concept of a tunable laser realized as a photonic integrated circuit using such technology are presented. Insights into the development of active and passive waveguide structures which are used to define a limited set of on-chip functionalities in the form of building blocks will be given. A novel tunable laser was proposed and designed using such predefined set of basic building blocks. The laser geometry features an intra-cavity wavelength tuning mechanism based on asymmetric Mach-Zehnder interferometers in a nested configuration. The photonic integrated circuit chip was fabricated within the first long wavelength multi-project wafer run. The experimental evaluations of the fabricated device show a record tuning range of 31 nm around 2027 nm and successful measurements of a 0.86 GHz wide absorption line of carbon dioxide. These results provide a demonstration of a fully functional photonic integrated circuit operating at wavelengths that are much longer than those in the typical telecommunication windows as well as the use of indium phosphide based generic photonic integration technologies for gas sensing applications.

The performance of integrated planar waveguide mode locked lasers can be enhanced using the available photonic integration platform technology in indium-phosphide. Extended cavity mode locked oscillators including DBR mirrors and phase modulators can be realized at telecom wavelengths to improve performance and control over the device. Integrated pulse shapers and special amplifiers can be used to improve the output properties further.

A novel operation mode field reconfigurable DBR laser is designed, realized and investigated experimentally. With different controlling of the same hardware, a shared-cavity six-section DBR laser diode can be flexibly configured to operate as a continuous wave or a pulsed wave laser.

We present our recent work on the realization of III-V-on-silicon mode-locked lasers and integrated nonlinear waveguides for the realization of integrated frequency combs.

Monolithic integration of four widely tunable extended cavity lasers suitable for gas detection is presented. Each laser features a precise, grid-less tuning mechanism with a low-linewidth, single-mode output over a wide wavelength range of 74nm.

The authors present the design and characterization of a novel integrated two-section discrete mode index patterned diode laser source. The two slotted regions etched into the laser ridge waveguide are formed in the same fabrication step as the ridge, thus avoiding the requirement for complex lithography and regrowth steps. The laser is encased in a temperature-controlled butterfly package, which simplifies the static and dynamic measurements. Initial static characterization of this two-section laser shows that the injection, from the master laser to the slave laser, enhances the slave's emission side-mode suppression ratio from 30 dB to over 50 dB and its relative intensity noise is reduced from about -129.3 dB/Hz to -142.6 dB/Hz. Subsequent dynamic characterization then shows that the modulation bandwidth of the laser can be improved via injection to about three times the inherent free-running bandwidth. Hence, optical injection from master section into slave section enables the improvement of various parameters, which makes this two-section device attractive as a transmitter in optical communication systems.

The authors demonstrate the generation of a highly coherent multicarrier signal that consists of eight clearly resolved 10.7-GHz coherent sidebands generated within 3 dB of the spectral envelope peak and with an extinction ratio in excess of 45 dB by gain switching a discrete mode (DM) laser. The generated spectral comb displays a corresponding picosecond pulse train at a repetition rate of 10.7 GHz with a pulse duration of 24 ps and a temporal jitter of ~450 fs. The optical spectra and associated pulses of the gain-switched DM laser are subsequently compared with a gain-switched distributed feedback (DFB) laser that generates a spectrum with no discernible sidebands and corresponding pulses with ~3 ps of temporal jitter. By means of external injection, the temporal jitter of the gain-switched DFB laser is then reduced to

This paper presents experimental investigations of the all-optical synchronization of a distributed Bragg reflector (DBR) laser self-pulsating at 40 GHz on various injected bit-rate signals. Even though there is no modulation applied to this laser, it exhibits a modulation of its output emission, measured at 39.7 GHz with a linewidth of 30 MHz. Such performance is exploited in all-optical clock recovery for a return-to-zero data stream at 40 Gbit/s. The SP-DBR laser wavelength and the injected signal wavelength are 10 nm apart. All-optical synchronization is demonstrated at 40 Gbit/s with a linewidth of less than 20 MHz for injected signals at 10 and 20 Gbit/s, respectively. Thus the SP-DBR laser proves to be very versatile and can be synchronized on various bit-rate data signals.

For the first time we demonstrate an anti-colliding mode-locked laser implemented on a III-V-on-silicon platform. In passive mode-locked operation a 1.7kHz 3dB linewidth of the fundamental RF tone at 4.83GHz is obtained.

A review is given of a number of lasers in a form of photonic integrated circuits realized on InP substrate using a generic integration approach. The potential of these photonic circuits lies in their compactness, low power consumption, and significant reduction of fabrication cost by realization in generic foundry runs. Generic integration platforms offer the possibility of realizing functionally advanced photonic circuits using combinations of just a few standardized and parameterized building blocks. This vibrant field opens new doors to innovative product development for SMEs as well as curiosity-driven research.

A tunable laser for single line gas spectroscopy is realized as a monolithic photonic integrated circuit in an InP based generic foundry platform. The laser operates at wavelengths around 2.0 μm and has a tuning range of 22 nm.

In this paper we present our recent progress on 2.5 GHz mode-locked, quantum well lasers operating at 1550 nm. Two such lasers are monolithically integrated on an InP substrate. Stable passive and hybrid mode-locking of both lasers operating at the same time with a small repetition rate difference is demonstrated.

Experimental and simulation work, presented in this letter, demonstrates for the first time how the monolithic integration of two single-mode lasers in a master-slave configuration, can substantially increase the achievable bit rate of a direct modulation adaptively modulated optical orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (AMO-OFDM) system. The Levin-Campello algorithm is applied to select the OFDM bit and power loading scheme used for each system configuration. Improvement in terms of data throughput due to injection is measured for several transmission distances with the improvement in performance presented in terms of error vector magnitude per OFDM subcarrier.

Wavelength tunability of an all-optical clock recovery operation based on a quantum-dash mode-locked Fabry-Perot laser diode is experimentally investigated. Synchronization of the device to the injection of 40-Gb/s nonreturn-to-zero (NRZ) incoming data is assessed by analyzing both the carrier-to-noise ratio and the linewidth of the 40-GHz beat-tones measured at the mode-locked laser output. Under optical injection, beat-tone linewidths below 10 Hz are measured. Recovered clock pulses featuring a width of 1.6 ps are obtained irrespective of the wavelength detuning between the laser spectra and the optical carrier of the incoming data stream.

We propose a simple potentially integrable configuration for expanding a wavelength tunable comb by cascading gain switched Fabry-Pe´rot lasers. A 10GHz spaced comb, exhibiting 13 coherent low-linewidth tones within a 3 dB window, and tunable over 20 nm is demonstrated.

A passively mode locked extended cavity quantum well ring laser at 1.58 µm with repetition rate of 2.5 GHz in the form of a photonic integrated circuit is presented. The device is realized using InP based active-passive integration technology. The 33mm long cavity contains gain, saturable absorption and passive waveguide sections as well as a phase shifter sections to enable fine tuning of the spectral position of the lasing modes. Passive mode-locked operation and with wavelength tuning of the laser modes are experimentally demonstrated. This laser is the lowest reported repetition rate for a monolithically integrated ring laser.

Using monolithic integration technology we have designed and fabricated tunable lasers in the 1.5 µm region with a demonstrated tuning range of 60 nm and single mode operation. This performance is achieved using intracavity tunable Mach-Zehnder interferometers that use voltage controlled phase modulators. In this paper we will discuss design considerations and advantages of such tunable lasers.

A ring mode-locked laser fabricated as a monolithic photonic integrated circuit using a InP based integration technology is presented. It generates an optical coherent comb around 1542 nm with a record 11.5 nm 3 dB bandwidth.

A tunable laser operating from 2015 – 2040 nm realized as a monolithic InP photonic integrated circuit is presented. The laser uses an intracavity tuning mechanism based on parallel asymmetric Mach-Zehnder interferometers with electro-refractive modulators. The device is intended for a single line gas spectroscopy and was designed and fabricated using a generic integration technology platform.

Spectral phase control of optical pulses is often required to generate short pulses, and an important application of a pulse shaper is spectral chirp/dispersion (pre-) compensation. In this paper, we present the pulse shaping/compression capability of a monolithically integrated optical pulse shaper. Chip fabrication has been carried out in a standardized generic photonic integration platform which is available in the framework of European FP7 project EuroPIC. A key capability of this platform is the active-passive integration scheme which allows direct integration of active components such as semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs) with passive elements such as arrayed waveguide gratings (AWGs) and phase modulators (PMs) on a single photonic chip.

Modal gain characterization of mid-infrared semiconductor optical amplifiers intended for an active-passive integration platform is presented. Measured gain profiles reveal the peak values at around 2.07μm and 3dB bandwidth up to 27nm.

We present the first 320Gb/s all-optical clock recovery by exploiting single Quantum Dash MLL to generate 40GHz synchronized optical clock pulse with 71fs timing jitter. 320Gb/s all-optical demultiplexing operation with 1dB BER penalty was demonstrated.

In this paper, we present the experimental investigation of the switching-on and passive mode-locking times of a Fabry-Perot quantum dash laser diode. Their values are 30ns and 8ns respectively. These times are measured in order to study the phenomenon of mode-locking in this device and its potential application for packet switching networks.

We experimentally investigate the locking/unlocking dynamics of a mode-locked QDash laser diode for packet-based clock-recovery applications. Results show 20 ns locking times for the passively and externally synchronized mode-locking mechanisms.

A wavelength tunable optical comb is generated based on the gain-switching of an externally seeded Fabry-Pérot laser diode. The comb consists of about eight clearly resolved 10 GHz coherent sidebands within 3 dB spectral envelope peak and is tunable over the entire C-band (1530 to 1570 nm). The optical linewidth of the individual comb tones is measured to be lower than 100 kHz, and the RIN of the individually filtered comb tones (-120 dB/Hz) is shown to be comparable to the entire unfiltered comb (-135 dB/Hz). Besides, expansion of the tunable gain switched comb is achieved with the aid of an optical phase modulator, resulting in near doubling of the number of comb tones.

A novel and cost effective long reach PON downlink scenario is proposed employing a multi-carrier transmitter and pilot tone aided direct detection at the receiver. Error free performance with QPSK and 50km transmission is presented.

Discrete Mode Laser Diodes (DMLDs) present an economic approach with a focus on high volume manufacturability of single mode lasers using a single step fabrication process. We report on a DMLD designed for operation in the 1550 nm window with high Side Mode Suppression Ratio (SMSR) over a wide temperature tuning range of -20 °C < T < 95 °C. Direct modulation rates as high as 10 Gbit/s are demonstrated at both 1550 nm and 1310 nm. Transmission experiments were also carried out over single mode fibre at both wavelengths. Using dispersion pre-compensation transmission from 0 to 60 km is demonstrated at 1550 nm with a maximum power penalty measured at 60 km of 3.6 dB.

The authors present a multi-carrier transmitter based on a gain switched laser employed in a next generation access network. The simple, robust and cost efficient direct modulation based comb generation technique offers closely spaced coherent channels. Each of the channels is imposed with 2.5 Gbaud data using QPSK and 16-QAM formats. The authors also present a performance comparison between the commonly used coherent detection scheme and a novel receiver architecture based on a pilot tone aided direct detection scheme. The simplified low cost receiver, enabled by the phase correlated optical comb tones, eases the requirement for an expensive local oscillator (tunable laser), reduces the need for digital signal processing and also greatly enhances the phase noise tolerance of the system.

Linewidth narrowing of the radio frequency beat-tones and the optical-modes is experimentally investigated in a ∼40 GHz quantum-dash mode-locked laser diode subject to optical injection of 10 GHz pulses. In comparison to the 75 kHz linewidth exhibited by the beat-tones in passive mode-locking conditions, a remarkable reduction to less than 8 Hz is achieved when the laser is under optical injection. From this beat-tone signal, an integrated root-mean-square timing jitter of 64 fs is calculated. In addition, a quadratic profile of the optical linewidth with the wavelength is observed in active locking, reaching a minimum of 1.7 MHz for the longitudinal modes around 1530 nm and progressively increasing to 37.4 MHz for modes at 1525 nm.

In this paper, a detection scheme based on four wave mixing in a semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) is used to measure the frequency and bandwidth of the optical terahertz beat-tone signal generated by a passively mode locked semiconductor laser. Two signals from external cavity lasers are injected into an SOA, which acts as a local oscillator at their detuning frequency. The device under test is a passively mode locked laser with a beat-tone frequency in the terahertz spectrum. Its optical signal is injected in the SOA, which also acts as a frequency mixer. The frequency and linewidth of the terahertz signal are then measured by retrieving the intermediate frequency detected by a low bandwidth photodiode and an electrical spectrum analyser.