InP-based photonic integrated circuits for future optical access networks

Thanks to the sharing of the infrastructure and the central equipment's between several customers, it is now well recognised that the optical fiber could be economically introduced in the network access with a passive optical network (PON) architecture. However, fiber penetration is presently limited by the excessive cost of the optical network unit (ONU) installed in the private customer premise. As the optical part of the ONU is one of the major component in the total cost, breakthroughs in existing technologies are urgently needed to fabricate these optical modules at very low cost. Hybrid integration of optoelectronic components on planar lightwave circuit is the proposed solution to reduced the optical module cost at short term. However, the monolithic integration of these components on a common InP substrate could lead to further cost decrease thanks to its very large volume production capabilities. So the aim of this paper is to review recent achievements of InP-based photonic integrated circuits (PIC's) for optical access network and to demonstrate their interest for cost reduction in the medium term.