Recent Developments and Signal Processing of Low Driving Voltage and High Modulation Efficiency Electro-absorption Modulators (EAMs)

Electro-absorption (EA) modulators are very attractive devices for optical fiber communications because of their very low driving voltage, very high modulation efficiency and integratibility with lasers. However, conventional EA modulators are lumped electrode devices, whose speeds are limited by the total parasitics of the devices, which restricts the devices to very short length for high speed operation. This paper has presented the important transmission characteristics of EA modulators such as transmission performance efficiency, modulation photocurrent, insertion loss, extinction ratio, relative refractive index difference, and signal transmission quality, over wide range of the affecting parameters for different selected electro-absorption materials to be the major of interest.