We have fabricated several two-dimensional photonic-crystal (2DPC) slab waveguides by using fine electron beam lithography and dry etching. The 2DPC waveguides include straight, bend, Y-branch, directional coupler, and coupled-cavity waveguides on the GaAs/AlGaAs substrate as an application to the ultra-small and ultra-fast all-optical switching device. Transmission spectra and near field patterns were characterized in a wide wavelength range from 850 to 1600 nm with the sample finished to the air-bridge type 2DPC slab. These waveguides appear to be suitable for achieving the waveguide platform in the symmetrical-Mach-Zehnder device.

Multi-band WDM transmission beyond the C+L-band is a promising technology for achieving larger capacity transmission by a limited number of installed fibers. In addition to the C- and L-band, we can expect to use the S-band as the next band. Although the development of optical components for new bands, particularly transceivers, entails resource dispersion, which is one of the barriers to the realization of multi-band systems, wavelength conversion by transparent all-optical signal processing enables new wavelength bandtransmission using existing components. Therefore, we proposed a transmission system including a new wavelength band such as the S-band and made it possible to use a transceiver for the existing band by performing the whole-band wavelength conversion without using a transceiver for the new band. As a preliminary verification to demonstrate multi-band WDM transmission including S-band, we investigated the application of a novel wavelength converter between C-band and S-band, which consists of periodically poled lithium niobate waveguide, to the proposed system. We first characterized the conversion efficiency and noise figure of the wavelength converter and estimated the transmission performance of the system through the wavelength converter. Using the evaluated wavelength converters and test signals of 64 channels arranged in the C-band at 75-GHz intervals, we constructed an experimental setup for S-band transmission through an 80-km standard single-mode fiber. We then demonstrated error-free transmission of real-time 400-Gb/s DP-16QAM signals after forward error correction decoding. From the experimental results, it was clarified that the wavelength converter which realizes the uniform lossless conversion covering the whole C-band effectively achieves the S-band WDM transmission, and it was verified that the capacity improvement of the multi-band WDM system including the S-band can be expected by applying it in combination with the C+L-band WDM system.

One of cost-effective ways to increase the transmission capacity of current standard wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) transmission systems is to use a wavelength band other than the C-band to transmit in multi-band. We proposed the concept of multi-band system using wavelength conversion, which can simultaneously process signals over a wide wavelength range. All-optical wavelength conversion could be used to convert C-band WDM signals into other bands in a highly nonlinear fiber (HNLF) by four-wave mixing and allow to simultaneously transmit multiple WDM signals including other than the C-band, with only C-band transceivers. Wavelength conversion has been reported for various nonlinear waveguide materials other than HNLF. In such nonlinear materials, we noticed the possibility of wideband transmission by dispersion-tailored silicon-on-insulator (SOI) waveguides. Based on the CMOS process has high accuracy, it is expected that the chromatic dispersion fluctuation could be reduced in mass production. As a first step in the investigation of the broadness of wavelength conversion using SOI-based waveguides, we designed and fabricated dispersion-tailored 12 strip waveguides provided with an edge coupler at both ends. Each of the 12 waveguides having different widths and lengths and is connected to fibers via lensed fibers or by lenses. In order to characterize each waveguide, the pump-probe experimental setup was constructed using a tunable light source as pump and an unmodulated 96-ch C-band WDM test signal. Using this setup, we evaluate insertion loss, input power dependence, conversion bandwidth and conversion efficiency. We confirmed C-band test signal was converted to the S-band and the L-band using the same silicon waveguide with 3dB conversion bandwidth over 100-nm. Furthermore, an increased design tolerance of at least 90nm was confirmed for C-to-S conversion by shortening the waveguide length. It is confirmed that the wavelength converters using the nonlinear waveguide has sufficiently wide conversion bandwidth to enhance the multi-band WDM transmission system.

We propose a built-in planar lens for coupling light to a waveguide on a 2-D photonic crystal (PhC) membrane. A 2-D PhC waveguide with the built-in lens has been fabricated with AlGaAs. Improvement in coupling performance is discussed in comparison to waveguides with straight ends as cleaved.

Optical Burst Switched (OBS) networks are considered as promising candidates for the next generation network architecture which does not need high-speed switch technologies. In OBS networks, contention resolution is one of the significant problems. Generally, setup reservations are operated per burst in OBS networks. To transmit multiple successive bursts successfully, the effective wavelength reservation must be implemented and enhanced network performance must be realized. In the proposed method, when an optical burst is generated and its destination is the same as that of the preceding burst or the path until the destination includes the entire path of the preceding burst, the subsequent burst is assigned to the same wavelength as the preceding burst and transmitted sequentially. The main aim in the proposed method is the efficient use of wavelength resources and the reduction of burst loss probability. We simulate and evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed method. As a result, it is verified that the proposed method can reduce the burst loss probably.

We report our recent progress in silicon photonics integrated device technology targeting on-chip-level large-capacity optical interconnect applications. To realize high-capacity data transmission, we successfully developed on-package-type silicon photonics integrated transceivers and demonstrated simultaneous 400 Gbps operation. 56 Gbps pulse-amplitude-modulation (PAM) 4 and wavelength-division-multiplexing technologies were also introduced to enhance the transmission capacity.

Silicon photonics technology is a promising candidate for small form factor transceivers that can be used in data-center applications. This technology has a small footprint, a low fabrication cost, and good temperature immunity. However, its main challenge is due to the high baud rate operation for optical modulators with a low power consumption. This paper investigates an all-Silicon Mach-Zehnder modulator based on the lumped-electrode optical phase shifters. These phase shifters are driven by a complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) inverter driver to achieve a low power optical transmitter. This architecture improves the power efficiency because an electrical digital-to-analog converter (DAC) and a linear driver are not required. In addition, the current only flows at the time of data transition. For this purpose, we use a PIN-diode phase shifter. These phase shifters have a large capacitance so the driving voltage can be reduced while maintaining an optical phase shift. On the other hand, this study integrates a passive resistance-capacitance (RC) equalizer with a PIN-phase shifter to expand the electro-optic (EO) bandwidth of a modulator. Therefore, the modulation efficiency and the EO bandwidth can be optimized by designing the capacitor of the RC equalizer. This paper reviews the recent progress for the high-speed operation of an all-Si PIN-RC modulator. This study introduces a metal-insulator-metal (MIM) structure for a capacitor with a passive RC equalizer to obtain a wider EO bandwidth. As a result, this investigation achieves an EO bandwidth of 35.7-37 GHz and a 70 Gbaud NRZ operation is confirmed.

An all-optical switch based on a single photonic crystal defect with an air-bridge configuration and two-photon absorption was proposed, fabricated and characterized. In optical measurements, we obtained a sharp defect mode with a quality factor higher than 600 at 1.55 µm. More importantly, we observed its nonlinear response to the excitation of ultrashort pulses by utilizing two-photon absorption. Nonliner refractive index change of about -410-3 was achieved at a pumping power density of 3.6109 W/cm2.