40 Gb/s Tandem Electro-Absorption Modulator

We demonstrate NRZ and RZ data transmission at 40 Gb/s using a tandem electro-absorption modulator with an integrated semiconductor amplifier (SOA). The tandem modulator consists of a broadband data encoder with greater than 40 GHz bandwidth, 13 dB of dynamic extinction ratio at 2.5 Vpp, and zero alpha parameter at -1.7V bias combined with a narrow band modulator capable of producing 5 ps pulses with more than 20 dB of extinction. The on chip SOA provides up to 8.5 dB of fiber to fiber gain and enables the tandem modulator to be operated with zero insertion loss. With a total length of only 1500 um, this device provides a compact integrated pulse carver/data encoder combination at a fraction of the power and size of lithium niobate solutions.