160-Gbit/s OTDM Receiver Consisting of a PD-EAM Optical Gate and an MLLD-Based Optical Clock Recovery Device

We have developed a semiconductor-based OTDM receiver comprised of a PD-EAM optical gate and an MLLD-based optical clock recovery device, and achieved error-free 1:4 demultiplexing of a 160-Gbit/s data stream.

Introduction

A 160-Gbit/s-transmission system employing optical time-division multiplexing (OTDM) is an attractive solution for future high-bit-rate fiber-optic communications systems [1]. As a compact and stable optical gate for the OTDM system, we have proposed a monolithic optical gate consisting of a uni-traveling-carrier photodiode (UTC-PD) and a traveling wave (TW) EAM (PD-EAM), and demonstrated error-free demultiplexing (DEMUX) operation up to 320-Gbit/s [2]. On the other hand, DEMUX also requires optical clock recovery at the reduced data rate. To effectively recover a fast optical clock, we have developed an optical clock recovery device that uses a regeneratively mode-locked laser diode (MLLD-OCR), and demonstrated successful recovery of a 40-GHz optical clock from a 160-Gbit/s data stream [3]. One of our goals is to construct a stable compact OTDM receiver employing these semiconductor-based optical devices. In this paper, we report the demultiplexing of a 160-Gbit/s data stream to 40-Gbit/s tributary data streams using a PD-EAM together with an MLLD-OCR.