Optical Fiber Telecommunications VIA

This chapter covers the field of semiconductor photonic integrated circuits (PIC) used in access, metro, long-haul, and undersea telecommunication networks. Although there are many variants to implementing optical integration; the focus is on monolithic integration where multiple semiconductor devices, up to many hundreds in some cases, are integrated onto the same substrate. Monolithic integration poses the greatest technical challenge and the biggest opportunity for bandwidth and size scaling. The PICs discussed here are based on the two most popular semiconductor material systems: Groups III–V indium phosphide-based devices and Group IV silicon-based devices. The chapter also covers the historical evolution of the technology from the decades old original proposal to the current day terabit/s class, coherent PICs.