Yung-Jr HUNG^*, San-Liang LEE, and Yen-Ting PAN

Dept. of Electronic Engineering, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, 43, Keelung Rd., Sec. 4, Taipei 106, Taiwan

(Received July 14, 2008; Revised December 25, 2008; Accepted January 29, 2009)

We propose a novel wavelength adjustable laser (WAL) with a photonic crystal based Fabry–Perot (FP) etalon. This laser will be a promising light source for optical network units (ONUs) of conventional wavelength-division-multiplexed passive optical network (WDM-PON) systems for up-stream transmission. It has the merits of a relatively simple fabrication and operation, wide process tolerance, low-cost, high side-mode suppression ratio, and wavelength-tunable characteristics. The optimization of the device structure and the implementation methods for this type of laser are discussed. Although the WALs in WDM-PON systems are not colorless, each laser can cover several wavelengths. Thus, the required number of different ONUs can be reduced. This approach may be necessary for 10 Gbps upstream transmission in next-generation optical access networks because the 10 Gbps data rate is difficult to achieve by using current colorless schemes.

Key words: Fabry–Perot etalon, photonic crystal, wavelength adjustable lasers (WALs), optical network unit (ONU), wavelength-division-multiplexed passive optical network (WDM-PON)

^*E-mail address: D9502307@mail.ntust.edu.tw