Integrated optics for optical communication

Abstract

In todays optical communication systems the link between electronics and the optical fibre cannot be made reliable and at reasonable cost simultaneously. It is one prominent task of integrated optics to remove this bottleneck by providing an opto-electronic converter as a monolithically integrated circuit. The paper gives a brief description of the opto-electronic converter, surveys the state of the art to realize individual components of the converter as well as first integrations of different substructures, and it also shows a few examples of recent work in the field. Attention is focussed almost exclusively on InP-based devices, which work in the 1.3 or 1.55 μm wavelength range, where the attenuation and dispersion of the optical fibre are lowest.