Electroabsorption Modulators Suitable for 100-Gb/s Ethernet

The design of a traveling-wave electroabsorption modulator (TWEAM) has been improved to decrease the drive voltage. The absorption layer was optimized and together with a novel segmentation of microwave design was introduced to increase the active modulator length. The resulting - 3-dBe bandwidth of fabricated devices was estimated to be 99 GHz. Extinction ratios of 10 dB back-to-back and 6.7 dB after transmission over 2.2-km long fiber were measured with an incident drive voltage of only 2 V peak to peak. This TWEAM performance is believed to constitute a new state of the art for modulators suitable for 100-Gb/s Ethernet with on-off keying.