It is widely recognized that in the new generation of photonic terabit packet routers optical integrated circuits will play a fundamental role for minimizing the cost of ownership, footprint, and power consumption of high-speed photonic interfaces. We review the present and future technologies for optical packet router architectures and the specific applications for photonic integrated circuits. Three technologies are today used for implementing optical integration: (a) monolithic InP integration allows all passive and active functions to be performed on the same chip with a minimum footprint but can raise issues of yield and scalability in bit rate; (b) hybrid InP/Si, in which the only functionality left to InP is the emitter, provides moderate yield performances but good results in terms of footprint and scalability in bit rate; (c) hybrid InP/silica, in which all active functionalities are performed in InP and all the passive in silica, is very well performing in terms of yield but has a large footprint and limited scalability in bit rate, which could be a limitation in certain applications.

© 2009 Optical Society of America

You do not have subscription access to this journal. Citation lists with outbound citation links are available to subscribers only. You may subscribe either as an OSA member, or as an authorized user of your institution.

Contact your librarian or system administrator
or
Log in to access OSA Member Subscription

You do not have subscription access to this journal. Cited by links are available to subscribers only. You may subscribe either as an OSA member, or as an authorized user of your institution.

Contact your librarian or system administrator
or
Log in to access OSA Member Subscription

Related Journal Articles

• Semiconductor laser with curved deep-etched distributed Bragg reflectors supporting a planar Gaussian mode (OL)
• Electrically-pumped, broad-area, single-mode photonic crystal lasers (OE)
• Modal properties and modal control in vertically emitting annular Bragg lasers (OE)
• Surface-emitting circular DFB, disk- and ring- Bragg resonator lasers with chirped gratings: a unified theory and comparative study (OE)
• Coupling of light from microdisk lasers into plasmonic nano-antennas (OE)

Related Conference Papers

• Optically Pumped Silicon Laser Based on Evanescent Coupling of Si Micro-Disk to III-V DBR Stack
• Localised Recombination in Quantum Dot Structures
• The Effect of P-Doping in In(Ga)As Quantum Dot Lasers
• Near-Infrared Subwavelength-Wire Lasers
• High-Power Expanded-Core-Waveguide Edge-Emitting Bipolar Cascade Lasers