We achieved first dynamic all-optical signal processing with a bandgap-engineered MZI SOA all-optical switch. The wide-gap Selective Area Growth (SAG) technique was used to provide multi-bandgap materials with a single step epitaxy. The maximum photoluminescence (PL) peak shift obtained between the active region and the passive region was 192 nm. The static current switching with the fabricated switch indicated a large carrier induced refractive index change; up to 14 π phase shift was obtained with 60 mA injection in the SOA. The carrier recovery time of the SOA for obtaining a phase shift of π was estimated to be 250-300 ps. A clear eye pattern was obtained in 2.5 Gbps all-optical wavelength conversion. This is the first all-optical wavelength conversion demonstration with a bandgap-engineered PIC with either selective area growth or quantum-well intermixing techniques.

A simple and novel multiple-symbol differential detection (MSDD) scheme is proposed for IEEE 802.15.4 binary phase shift keying (BPSK) receivers. The detection is initiated by estimating and compensating the carrier frequency offset (CFO) effect in the chip sample of interest. With these new statistics, the decisions are jointly made by allowing the observation window length to be longer than two bit intervals. Simulation results demonstrate that detection reliability of the IEEE 802.15.4 BPSK receivers is significantly improved. Namely, at packet error rate (PER) of 1×10-3, the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) gap between ideal coherent detection (perfect carrier reference phase and no CFO) with differential decoding and conventional optimal single differential coherent detection (SDCD) is filled by 2.1dB when the observation window length is set to 6bit intervals. Then, the benefit that less energy consumed by retransmissions is successfully achieved.

Simulation and fabrication results on back-illuminated 4-channel photodiode (PD) array with a self-aligned micro ball lens are described. The channel pitch and diameter of each photosensitive area are 250 µm and 40 µm, respectively. Measured photocurrent is 1.92 times larger than that without a lens. Alignment tolerance between the single mode fiber (SMF) optical axis and the photodiode is improved from 21.2 µm to 42.7 µm. Moreover, the separation tolerance between the fiber and the lens is 210.5 µm. These large tolerances agree with simulation results, demonstrating that the device configuration is suitable for receivers for multi-channel inter-connection. Frequency response and inter-channel cross talk are also discussed.