Different-wavelength distributed feedback laser diodes with integrated modulators (DFB/MODs) are fabricated on a single wafer operate at wavelengths from 1. 52 µm to 1. 59 µm, a range comparable to the expanded Er-doped fiber amplifier gain band. A newly developed field-size-variation electron-beam lithography enables grating pitch to be controlled to within 0. 0012 nm, and narrow-stripe selective metal-organic vapor-phase epitaxy is used to control the bandgap wavelength of laser active layers and modulator absorption layers for each channel. The channel spacing of fabricated 40-channel DFB/MODs is 214 GHz in average with a standard deviation of 0. 39 nm. Very uniform lasing and modulating performances are achieved, such as threshold currents about 10 mA and extinction ratios about 20 dB at -2 V in average. These devices have been used to demonstrate 2. 5-Gb/s transmission over 600 km of a normal fiber with a power penalty of less than 1 dB.

Various types of wavelength-selectable light sources (WSLs) and wavelength-tunable laser diodes (LDs) have been developed, and the one based on an array of distributed feedback (DFB) laser diodes (LDs) has the advantage of tuning that is both simple and stable tuning. It requires only the selection of a DFB-LD and a temperature control. We report on monolithically integrated WSLs with a DFB-LD array, multimode interference (MMI) coupler, semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA), and electro-absorption (EA) modulator. To make them compact, we introduced microarray structures and to ensure that they were easy to fabricate, we used selective area growth. For the WSL with an integrated EA modulator, we developed a center-temperature-shift method that optimizes the detuning wavelength between the lasing wavelength and the absorption edge wavelength of the EA-modulator. Using this method, we obtained a uniform extinction ratio and were able to demonstrate error-free 2.5-Gb/s transmission over a 600-km fiber span. A CW-WSL without an EA-modulator should provide enough output power to compensate the loss caused by the external modulators, but the high-power operation of a CW-WSL is sensitive to optical feedback from the front facet. We therefore used an angled facet in our WSLs and eliminated a mode hop problem. More than 20 mW of fiber-coupled power was obtained over 23 ITU-T channels on a 50-GHz grid.

We propose a new design approach to improve the computational efficiency of an optimal design of optical waveguide devices utilizing coupled mode theory (CMT) and a neural network (NN). Recently, the NN has begun to be used for efficient optimal design of optical devices. In this paper, the eigenmode analysis required in the CMT is skipped by using the NN, and optimization with an evolutionary algorithm can be efficiently carried out. To verify usefulness of our approach, optimal design examples of a wavelength insensitive 3dB coupler, a 1 : 2 power splitter, and a wavelength demultiplexer are shown and their transmission properties obtained by the CMT with the NN (NN-CMT) are verified by comparing with those calculated by a finite element beam propagation method (FE-BPM).