20-Gbit/s high-performance MQW TANDEM for soliton generation and coding

As a consequence of the growing interest for 1.55-μm optical-soliton transmission, many laboratories are investigating how to generate and code these optical pulses in a stable and reliable manner. Electroabsorption (EA) modulators have been demonstrated as zero-jitter, stable, and frequency-flexible high-speed soliton sources,1 by simply driving them with a sinusoidal signal.2 The integration of a second modulator allows the coding of the pulses. In our case we have also integrated on the same active layer an optical amplifier between the modulators to reduce electrical cross talk (<40 dB) and fiber-to-fiber losses (<9 dB).