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AssigneeOki Electric Industry Co., Ltd.
InventorsKozo Fujii, Yukihiro Ozeki
Estimating the term…
A semiconductor optical modulator having an electroabsorptive layer and a pair of modulating voltage electrodes also has a direct-current voltage electrode, from which an unmodulated electric field can be applied to the electroabsorptive layer to adjust the output optical power level. The output optical power level can thus be adjusted without the need for an external attenuator, and without shifting the modulating voltage away from the part of the extinction ratio characteristic having the best linearity. An optical multiplexing module using semiconductor optical modulators of this type can generate a multiplexed output signal with a uniform optical power level simply by controlling the direct-current voltages applied to the semiconductor optical modulators.
A semiconductor optical modulator, comprising:
A method of controlling a semiconductor optical modulator having an electroabsorptive layer absorbing incident light responsive to an electric field intensity, a pair of modulating voltage electrodes disposed on opposite sides of the electroabsorptive layer, for receiving an applied modulating voltage and generating an electric field that modulates light incident to the electroabsorptive layer, and a direct-current voltage electrode for receiving a direct-current voltage and applying a direct-current electric field to the electroabsorptive layer, the method comprising:
A method of controlling an optical multiplexing module comprising a plurality of semiconductor optical modulators and a like plurality of direct-current voltage controllers paired with the semiconductor optical modulators, each one of the semiconductor optical modulators having an electroabsorptive layer absorbing incident light responsive to an electric field intensity, a pair of modulating voltage electrodes disposed on opposite sides of the electroabsorptive layer, for receiving an applied modulating voltage and generating an electric field that modulates light incident to the electroabsorptive layer, and a direct-current voltage electrode for receiving a direct-current voltage and applying a direct-current electric field to the electroabsorptive layer, the paired one of the direct-current voltage controllers controlling the direct-current voltage supplied to the direct-current voltage electrode of said one of the semiconductor optical modulators, the method comprising:
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.