IEEE PHOTONICS TECHNOLOGY LETTERS, VOL. 27, NO.
22, NOVEMBER 15, 2015
Hybrid III–V/Silicon SOA in Optical Network
Based on Advanced Modulation Formats
Peter Kaspar, Guilhem de Valicourt, Romain Brenot, Miquel A. Mestre, Philippe Jennevé, Alain Accard,
Dalila Make, François Lelarge, Guang-Hua Duan, Nicola Pavarelli, Marc Rensing, Cormac Eason,
Peter O’Brien, Ségolène Olivier, Stéphane Malhouitre, Christophe Kopp,
Chirstophe Jany, and Sylvie Menezo
Abstract— A hybrid III–V/silicon semiconductor optical
amplifier (SOA) is presented, which shows a maximum fiber-
to-fiber gain of 10 dB and a maximum internal gain around
28 ± 2 dB. The device was fabricated from III–V material
wafer-bonded onto a silicon-on-insulator wafer. The optical mode
transfers between silicon and III–V waveguides by means of
waveguide tapers. Vertical grating couplers are used to connect
the SOA to optical fibers. The device was packaged and tested
in a transmission experiment. In a loop configuration containing
25 km of single-mode fiber, the SOA amplifies data signals of
various modulation formats. Transmission with a bit error rate
below the forward error correction limit is demonstrated for up
to ten loops using QPSK, six loop using 8QAM, and four loops
using 16QAM.
Index Terms— Semiconductor optical amplifiers, photonic
integrated circuits, hybrid integration, wafer bonding, silicon-on-
insulator, III-V semiconductor materials, optical fiber networks,
advanced modulation formats.
I. I NTRODUCTION
S ILICON-BASED photonic integrated circuits (PIC) with
integrated light sources and amplifiers are a promising
prospect for many applications in optical communication net-
works. Hybrid III-V/silicon lasers and semiconductor optical
amplifiers (SOA) can be integrated in complex PICs and
potentially replace discrete components that are nowadays put
together in expensive assembly procedures to build network
equipment for current optical networks. Moreover, advanced
network designs using wavelength division multiplex-
ing (WDM) and advanced modulation formats are conquer-
ing the markets at ever shorter transmission ranges, despite
Manuscript received May 9, 2015; revised July 29, 2015; accepted
August 7, 2015. Date of publication August 11, 2015; date of current version
September 30, 2015. This work was supported in part by the European FP7
Projects Fabulous under Contract 318704 and in part by the Hyssop under
Contract 328364.
P. Kaspar, R. Brenot, A. Accard, D. Make, F. Lelarge, and
G.-H. Duan are with the III–V Laboratory, Palaiseau F-91767, France
(e-mail: guanghua.duan@3-5lab.fr).
G. de Valicourt, M. A. Mestre, and P. Jennevé are with the Centre
de Villarceaux, WDM Dynamic Networks Department, Bell Laboratories,
Nozay 91620, France (e-mail: guilhem.de_valicourt@alcatel-lucent.com).
N. Pavarelli, M. Rensing, C. Eason, and P. O’Brien are with
the Tyndall National Institute, University College Cork, Cork, Ireland
(e-mail: peter.obrien@tyndall.ie).
S. Olivier, S. Malhouitre, C. Kopp, C. Jany, and S. Menezo are with
CEA–Leti, Grenoble 38054, France (e-mail: segolene.olivier@cea.fr).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this letter are available
online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/LPT.2015.2466543
1041-1135 © 2015 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
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2383
the complexity of such systems. If the cost for assembly,
maintenance, and inventory of such systems can be drastically
reduced by using hybrid integration, a wide range of innovative
network setups will become commercially interesting.
In recent years, many types of hybrid III-V/silicon lasers
have been demonstrated [1]–[7], while the hybrid SOA has
received very little attention [8], [9]. However, in many
types of network applications, SOAs will play a crucial role,
not only to compensate for accumulated losses, but also as
functional devices such as remote modulators in colorless
network units [10], optical gates for packet switching [11],
nonlinear elements for wavelength conversion [12], or
broadband sources [13].
In the present article, we first give the static performance of
a hybrid III-V/silicon SOA that we have previously presented
in [14], and then we focus on the potential benefits of SOAs
for in-line amplification in a context of metropolitan optical
networks using QPSK, 8-QAM and 16-QAM modulation
formats. We demonstrate up to 10 cascaded nodes separated
by 25 km of single-mode fiber (SMF) and study the impact
of the non-linear penalty as well as the noise accumulation
induced by the device.
II. SOA D ESIGN AND S TATIC P ERFORMANCE
All results reported here are obtained from a hybrid III-V/
silicon SOA that was fabricated using molecular wafer bond-
ing of III-V quantum well (QW) material on a patterned
and planarized silicon-on-insulator (SOI) wafer. III-V wave-
guides were formed after bonding, and standard 405 nm h-line
photolithography was used to align them to the underlying
silicon waveguides. Lasers obtained from the same fabrication
process have been reported in previous publications [2].
Transitions between active and passive sections of the
hybrid SOA are made using tapered waveguides that force the
optical mode to transfer from silicon to III-V material and vice
versa (cf. Fig. 1) [2]. In the active section, the mode overlap
with the QWs is close to 10%. The active section of the SOA
is around 1.1 mm long. The coupling loss at the active/passive
interface is potentially very low [2]. Another major advantage
of hybrid integration of SOAs using bonded active material
and tapered waveguides is the easy alignment of active and
passive waveguides (using standard photo-lithography). In
2384 IEEE PHOTONICS TECHNOLOGY LETTERS, VOL. 27, NO. 22, NOVEMBER 15, 2015

Fig. 2. SOA saturation power for various currents applied to the SOA.
Fig. 1. Top and cross-sectional views of the taper structure for mode transfer The 3dB-saturation power is given at the fiber input, input silicon waveguide,
between III-V and silicon waveguides of the hybrid SOA. Simulated mode output silicon waveguide, and output fiber.
profiles are given for three exemplary cross-sections.

integration approaches based on butt-coupling, the alignment

(in particular the vertical alignment) is often the most critical
issue. While the problem of aligning butt-joint interfaces
seems to be manageable for lasers (only one interface) [1], the
degree of difficulty will increase when integrating SOAs (two
interfaces). This is not the case for the bonding approaches,
where the second interface comes for free.
The hybrid SOA was packaged into a modified butterfly
package using single-mode fibers, which were cleaved at an
angle of 40° (they come in parallel to the SOA rib with
the cleaved ends aligned onto vertical grating couplers and Fig. 3. SOA gain as a function of the injected optical power for various
currents applied to the SOA (the origin of the peak around −8 dBm has not
are attached using an index-matching epoxy resin [15]). The yet been fully understood).
package includes a thermoelectric cooler (TEC) for active
temperature control. The insertion loss on the input and output
side is estimated to be in a range of 9±1dB (more specifically,
we estimate 7 dB of loss due to the grating couplers (3 dB
bandwidth of 60 nm) and 2 dB of loss in the transition between
the silicon waveguide and the gain region [14]).
The fiber-to-fiber gain of the packaged SOA reaches
a maximum of 10 dB and a 3dB bandwidth of 26 nm
(T = 20°C, λ = 1540nm, I = 90 mA). This corresponds
to an internal gain of up to 28±2 dB (3 dB bandwidth
of 30 nm) if the insertion losses are taken into account.
For the transmission experiments of Section III, the device
was pumped at 75 mA, which corresponds to a small-signal
Fig. 4. SOA noise factor as a function of injected optical power for various
fiber-to-fiber gain of 7.5 dB at a wavelength of 1550 nm. currents applied to the SOA.
Figures 2 and 3 show the saturation behavior of the hybrid
SOA at a wavelength of 1540 nm. For an SOA current
of 75 mA, saturation takes place at a fiber input power
TE polarized. Figure 4 shows the noise factor of the
around −2.5 dBm, which corresponds to a fiber output power
packaged SOA versus injection current. For input powers
of 2 dBm.
around −8 dBm, the NF is around 17 dB. This large value
The noise factor (NF) was computed under the assumption
is mainly due to coupling losses through the vertical grating
that the dominant noise contribution comes from the
coupler into the fiber. In future systems where the SOA will
beating between the signal and the amplified spontaneous
be integrated with other on-chip devices, the relevant noise
emission ASE:
figure would be an internal NF, which does not include such
2 PAS E,|| coupling losses. For the current example, the internal NF is
NF =
G hυ B0 in the vicinity of 10 dB.
where PAS E,|| is the TE-polarized ASE power, G is the At low optical power injected into the SOA, the ASE
optical gain, hυ is the photon energy, and B0 is the detection dominates the amplified signal, and the noise factor in Fig. 4
bandwidth (here 0.2 nm). Since the quantum wells of the is high. As the optical signal increases, the noise drops up
gain material as well as the output couplers are optimized to a point where saturation of the SOA sets in. According to
for TE light, we assume that the detected power is entirely Fig. 2 the input saturation power is in the vicinity of −3 dBm,

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KASPAR et al.: HYBRID III–V/SILICON SOA IN OPTICAL NETWORK 2385

Fig. 5. Constellation diagrams for 16QAM transmission after a single pass

through the hybrid SOA. The optical input power of −16 dBm (left) is in the
linear regime, whereas at −8 dBm, nonlinear effects can be observed.
Fig. 6. Experimental setup to emulate an optical network with a hybrid
SOA at each node; ECL: external cavity laser; (D)MUX: (de)multiplexer;
i.e., SOA saturation hinders the noise from reaching values PC: polarization control; VOA: variable optical attenuator; ADC: analog to
comparable to state-of-the-art SOAs on InP (6-8 dB). In the digital conversion; DSP: digital signal processing.
next generation of devices, the saturation power will have
to be increased, which can be achieved by decreasing the
confinement factor of the optical mode in the active layers
of the waveguide.
In the linear regime of the SOA (before saturation), the
noise of the SOA can be assumed to be Gaussian noise. In a
transmission system using advanced modulation formats such
as QPSK or QAM, the Gaussian noise adds radial jitter to
the constellation points (isotropic noise, equally distributed in
phase and amplitude). Hence, according to Fig. 4, we would
expect that radial jitter drops significantly at input powers
around −10 dBm. At the same time, according to Fig. 3,
saturation effects start to set in around −10 dBm. This causes
the NF to increase again, and it introduces a chirp (nonlinear
regime). In this non-linear regime there will be additional
phase noise, which shows as angular jitter in the constel-
lation points (called nonlinear phase noise). The difference
between the linear and the nonlinear regime in the resulting
constellation diagram is illustrated in Fig. 5, which depicts the
example of a 16QAM transmission through the hybrid SOA
at Pin = −16 dBm (linear) and Pin = −8 dBm (nonlinear).

III. S YSTEM I MPLEMENTATION

To assess the performance of the described hybrid SOA
as in-line optical amplifier in optical network nodes, we
used the setup shown in Fig. 6. For such an experiment,
we modulated the light of an external cavity laser using an
I/Q modulator. Two digital-to-analog converters were used to
drive the modulator, generating optical signals at 28 Gbaud
with diverse modulation formats: QPSK, 8- and 16-QAM.
All signals are based on pseudo-random binary sequences
Fig. 7. Received Q-factor versus SOA input power after transmission through
of length 215-1 bits. The light enters into a recirculating various numbers of loops (cf. Fig. 3) using QPSK (top), 8-QAM (center), and
loop emulating the propagation through many optical nodes 16-QAM (bottom) modulation formats. Error-free transmission was plotted as
via acousto-optic switches. The SOA was inserted in a node Q = 15 in order to avoid infinite values.
with two wavelength selective switches working as wavelength
(de)multiplexers. The signal was amplified by 7.5 dB at each
pass. We used a variable optical attenuator (VOA) to control photodiodes connected to a 20 GHz bandwidth oscilloscope
the power level at the input of the SOA, a 25 km fiber to working at 40 GS/s. All measured waveforms were processed
emulate the propagation between two nodes, and an erbium- offline. The polarization of the optical signal had to be adjusted
doped fiber amplifier to make up for the extra losses of the manually in the course of the experiments.
recirculating loop (all but the SMF loss). Finally, we detect For all three modulation formats used in the experiments,
the signals using a coherent mixer and four pairs of balanced Fig. 7 shows the Q-factor at the receiver as a function of

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2386
Fig. 8. Constellation diagrams for QPSK (left), 8QAM (center), and
16QAM (right) transmission for zero passages (top row) and maximum
number of passages (bottom row) through the SOA.
the input power at the fiber connector of the packaged SOA.
As noted in the previous section, there are two operation
regimes that can be distinguished in the Q(Pin ) characteristics.
At low incident optical powers, isotropic (amplitude/phase)
noise degrades the received signal, while at high Pin , distortion
of the constellation points is mainly due to phase noise. The
turning point observed in Fig. 7 is around −12 dBm for all
modulation formats and independent of the number of passes
through the SOA. This is somewhat lower than the −10 dBm
that we predicted in Section II from the static noise and
saturation measurements of Figs. 3 and 4. In order to better
understand such results, more details on the evolution of both
phase and amplitude noise along the cascade of SOAs over
QPSK and M-QAM signals can be found in [16].
Figure 8 shows the constellation diagrams without trans-
mission through the SOA loop next to those with a maximum
number of loops for each modulation format, using an SOA
input power of −12 dBm. The higher the complexity of
the modulation format, the closer the symbols are to one
another, and the more the transmission becomes sensitive to
both amplitude and phase noise introduced by the SOA. For
a forward error correction (FEC) threshold of Q = 6.25, the
maximum number of loops is 10 for QPSK, 6 for 8QAM and
3 for 16-QAM. Clearly, in terms of signals travelling inside
long cascades of transparent optical network nodes, these
are rather small numbers. However, there are several ways
in which we can significantly improve the SOA. Firstly, the
coupling losses can be reduced by at least 3-4 dB. Secondly,
the saturation power can be increased by using a waveguide
geometry with a smaller gain overlap. In the present device,
the overlap is in the order of 10%. By reducing it to the vicinity
of 1%, the saturation power can potentially be increased by as
much as 10 dB. It is a great advantage of the hybrid technology
using wafer bonding that the gain overlap can be adapted by
geometrical changes of the waveguides without the necessity
for modifications in the fabrication process, nor in the epitaxial
structure of the bonded active material. Furthermore, even
if the device does not meet the specific requirements of
metropolitan network with large number of cascaded nodes, its
potential for cost-sensitive optical ring networks as proposed
for access, mobile back-haul and datacenter, which require
much lower number of cascaded nodes, is very promising.
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IEEE PHOTONICS TECHNOLOGY LETTERS, VOL. 27, NO. 22, NOVEMBER 15, 2015
IV. C ONCLUSION
We presented a hybrid III-V/silicon SOA, packaged
into a modified butterfly package, with up to 10 dB of
fiber-to-fiber gain (28 dB of internal gain). The performance
of the SOA was tested in a recirculating loop configuration
that emulates an optical network with several nodes, each
comprising the same hybrid SOA. The advanced modulation
formats QPSK, 8-QAM, and 16-QAM were used to study the
transmission behavior. A maximum number of 10, 6, and 3
passes was observed for the different formats in order of
increasing modulation complexity. Our result is a very promis-
ing solution towards a fully hybrid photonic integrated circuit
for applications such as inline amplification, optical packet
switching, multi-mode and multi-core amplification in high
bit rate optical networks. Significant improvements can be
expected if the coupling loss is reduced and the saturation
power is increased.
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