1408

JOURNAL OF LIGHTWAVE TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 17, NO. 8, AUGUST 1999

Design of InGaAsP Multiple Quantum-Well FabryPerot Modulators for Soliton Control

Robert I. Killey, Mark Whitehead, Paul N. Stavrinou, Gareth Parry, and Christopher C. Button
AbstractThe use of synchronous optical modulators is effective in reducing the pulse timing jitter in long-distance soliton transmission. The inherently polarization-insensitive characteristics of the FabryPerot multiple quantum-well (MQW) electroabsorption modulator make it a potentially suitable device for this application. We investigate the intensity and phase modulation characteristics of symmetric and asymmetric FabryPerot modulators, and show that, by positioning the resonant wavelength <30 nm away from the exciton absorption peak to obtain negative chirp operation, both congurations can be used to successfully reduce timing jitter in a 20 Gb/s soliton system. Index Terms FabryPerot electroabsorption modulator, intensity and phase modulation, soliton control, vertical cavity.

I. INTRODUCTION HE USE of soliton optical pulses has the potential to minimize signal distortion due to ber nonlinearities and dispersion in long-distance optical communications systems. With nonsoliton signal formats, the power dependent frequency chirp, which builds up during propagation due to self-phase modulation (SPM), is converted to intensity distortion by the group velocity dispersion (GVD). This effect limits the signal power, and hence the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and interamplier span lengths that can be achieved. With soliton pulses, the effects of SPM and GVD balance each other, minimizing the intensity distortion and accumulation of chirp. Recent experiments have demonstrated up to 40 Gb/s over distances greater than 10 000 km [1]. The use of solitons can also be combined with wavelength division multiplexing (WDM), to achieve extremely large aggregate bit rates [2], [3]. However, the capacity, transmission distance, and amplier span-length of soliton systems are limited by pulse timing jitter, which is caused by a number of nonlinear effects. First, the frequency shifts of the pulses due to the amplied spontaneous emission (ASE) noise from the erbium-doped ber ampliers (EDFAs) lead to GordonHaus jitter [4].
Manuscript received January 20, 1999; revised May 6, 1999. This work was supported in part by the UK EPSRC and Alcatel Submarine Networks Ltd. R. I. Killey was with the Department of Engineering Science, IRC Semiconductor Materials, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3PJ U.K. He is now with the Optical Networks Group, the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, University College London, London, WC1E 7JE U.K. M. Whitehead, P. N. Stavrinou, and G. Parry were with the Department of Engineering Science, IRC Semiconductor Materials, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3PJ U.K. They are now with the Department of Physics, IRC Semiconductor Materials, The Blackett Laboratory, Imperial College, London, SW7 2BZ UK. C. C. Button is with the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, IRC Semiconductor Materials, EPSRC Central Facility for IIIV Semiconductors, University of Shefeld, Shefeld, S1 3JD U.K. Publisher Item Identier S 0733-8724(99)06330-6.

Fig. 1. Schematic of soliton system with synchronous optical modulator control.

Second, nonlinear interaction occurs between neighboring solitons of the same wavelength [5], and also with pulses in other WDM channels due to cross-phase modulation (XPM) [6]. All these effects give rise to small, random shifts in the center wavelength of the pulse spectra, leading to different propagation velocities in the dispersive ber and hence the timing jitter at the receiver. A number of techniques have been investigated to control or compensate for these effects, hence extending the bit-rate and distance limits. One of the most effective is the use of synchronous in-line modulators [7], shown schematically in Fig. 1. A coupler, photodetector, and high-Q lter or phaselock loop are used to recover the clock from the optical signal. This sinusoidal voltage, at a frequency equal to the signal bit rate, is amplied and used to drive the modulator. If the phase of the drive voltage is correctly adjusted and the characteristics of the modulator are optimized, the amplitude and phase modulation imposed on the signal transmitted through the device correct the pulse timing errors and reduce the noise level between the pulses. The effectiveness of this method of soliton control has been demonstrated using LiNbO3 [8] and InP [9] MachZehnder modulators and semiconductor waveguide electroabsorption modulators [10][13]. Electroabsorption modulators have been used to achieve 40-Gb/s soliton propagation over transoceanic distances [12], and an increase in the interamplier span distance to 140 km for a 20-Gb/s transmission has been demonstrated [13]. Synchronous modulation control in WDM soliton transmission has also been investigated, in which the channels are demultiplexed at each regenerator, and the control modulation applied to each separately prior to recombining [14].

07338724/99$10.00 1999 IEEE

KILLEY et al.: DESIGN OF InGaAsP MQW FABRYPEROT MODULATORS

1409

One disadvantage of employing in-line modulators is that their polarization sensitivity can degrade the signal, since the polarization state varies randomly during propagation. The waveguide structures exhibits a polarization dependent loss [11], and, while the quantum-conned Stark effect (QCSE) in multiquantum-well (MQW) structures can be used for efcient modulation, its strength depends on the direction of the signals eld oscillations relative to the plane of the quantum-wells [15]. One solution to this problem is to use vertical cavity FabryPerot MQW modulators, in which the light propagates orthogonally through the quantum wells. The electric eld oscillations are always in the plane of the quantum wells, and this, combined with the absence of waveguiding within these devices, results in polarization insensitivity. We describe here experiments and modeling to investigate the suitability of FabryPerot MQW modulators for soliton control.

(a)

(b)

(c)

Fig. 2. Schematics of (a) symmetric FabryPerot, (b) asymmetric FabryPerot, and (c) inverted asymmetric FabryPerot modulators.

II. DEVICE STRUCTURES

AND

REQUIREMENTS

The design of modulators for soliton control has been investigated by a number of groups [8][13], [16]. With large spacing of the modulators, optimum characteristics are a modulation depth of 3 dB or more, combined with negative chirp operation. This last feature is important, as both the amplitude and the phase modulation of the device work to control the solitons. The amplitude modulation transmits the pulses but absorbs the noise between the pulses and the tails of neighboring pulses. The phase modulation red shifts early pulses and blue shifts late ones, thus adjusting their propagation velocities in the dispersive ber and so moving them back to their correct timing positions [16]. Increasing absorption must coincide with negative going phase shift, and hence negative chirp operation is necessary. The thickness of the MQW active region in a normal incidence electroabsorption modulator is typically 1 m. If the light makes a single pass vertically through this layer, the interaction length is too short for the 3 dB modulation depth necessary for effective soliton control. Hence, to increase the effective interaction length, the MQW layers are placed inside a FabryPerot resonator, formed by InGaAsP/InP distributed Bragg reectors (DBR) or metal reectors. In the symmetric FabryPerot modulator (SFPM) conguration, shown in Fig. 2(a), the reectors have equal reectivities, and the device works in transmission mode, with the maximum modulation occurring at the resonant wavelength, where the optical length of the cavity is an integer number of half-wavelengths. With an alternative design, the asymmetric FabryPerot modulator (AFPM) [17] shown in Fig. 2(b), the back reector has a reectivity of close to 100%. The output light is reected from the device and can be separated from the input path using an optical circulator. The modulation depth of the AFPM is large due to the destructive interference between the light reected directly from the front mirror and the light which enters and is reected from inside the cavity. A modulation depth of 20 dB for 5 V drive voltage was achieved with the rst GaAs/AlGaAs AFPMs [17], while InGaAsP/InP AFPMs operating at 1.55 m with a modulation depth of 21 dB and 20 GHz operation have been demonstrated [18].

Fig. 3. Multiple quantum-well test structure for quantum-conned Stark effect measurements.

The back reector of these devices comprised 30.5 periods of InGaAsP/InP to achieve a high reectivity. To avoid the requirement of such a large number of layers, an inverted design may be used, in which the Au p-contact doubles as the back reector, and the modulator is optically addressed through the substrate [Fig. 2(c)]. InGaAs/InP AFPMs with this conguration have been fabricated, exhibiting a 3-dB modulation depth with a 5-V bias swing and only 1.8 dB insertion loss [19]. III. MODULATOR DESIGN The rst step in the design process was the measurement of the electroabsorptive effect in the InGaAsP MQW active region, to obtain accurate material parameters for the modulator modeling and design. This structure was grown by MOVPE and is shown in Fig. 3. Shallow quantum wells with quaternary well and barrier material were used to reduce the lifetimes of the photo-induced holes that saturate the absorption of deeper

1410

JOURNAL OF LIGHTWAVE TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 17, NO. 8, AUGUST 1999

(a)

(b) Fig. 4. (a) Measured absorption coefcients of MQW test structure as a function of wavelength and bias voltage and (b) calculated associated refractive index changes. Fig. 5. Complete AFPM structure and experimental reectivity of the biased device.

InGaAs/InP quantum wells at high optical intensity [20]. The 1- m thick MQW structure was grown in a p-i-n diode structure, and individual devices isolated by wet-etching mesas through the p- and i-layers. The electric eld across the MQW was applied by reverse-biasing the diode. Tunable narrow linewidth light from a monochromator was transmitted through the biased MQW layers and detected, allowing measurements of the wavelength and voltage dependent absorption coefcient of the layers to be made [Fig. 4(a)]. Fig. 4(b) shows the accompanying refractive index changes, calculated from the absorption spectra using the KramersKronig relationship. With the measurements of the MQW electroabsorption and refraction, it was possible to model the modulation characteristics of the FabryPerot modulators. Transmission and reection characteristics of these multilayer devices were calculated using the transfer matrix method [21]. As for waveguide electroabsorption modulators, it is necessary to operate at a wavelength where increasing absorption coincides with negative-going refractive index to achieve a negative chirp characteristic. From Fig. 4, it can be seen that this occurs at wavelengths <30 nm away from the exciton. In this region, the absorption is quite high, and for this reason, negative chirp

electroabsorption modulators exhibit quite high losses [22]. Both AFPM and SFPM structures were designed, to obtain, in both cases, a 3 dB modulation depth with negative chirp and an intrinsic loss (excluding coupling losses) of <3 dB. The structure of the AFPM is shown in Fig. 5. An inverted conguration was used, consisting of the 60 period MQW active region tested previously and a 7.5 period front DBR, layers of InP and InGaAsP of bandgap with m. The Au/Zn p-contact was not annealed, to maintain the high reectivity at the metal-semiconductor interface. The calculated intensity and phase modulation characteristics are shown in Fig. 6. The modulator exhibits a negative chirp characteristic over a 15-nm wavelength range. At the shorter wavelengths, corresponding to low electroabsorptive but large electrorefractive effects, the device exhibits almost pure phase modulation, with a 12 phase shift obtained with a 5 V swing. As the wavelength is increased, the intensity modulation increases, to a maximum of 3 dB and the phase modulation reduces until positive chirp operation occurs. The same MQW active region was used in the SFPM design, combined with front and back DBRs of 8.5 and 12.5 periods, respectively. The calculated intensity and phase

KILLEY et al.: DESIGN OF InGaAsP MQW FABRYPEROT MODULATORS

1411

Fig. 6. Calculated intensity and phase modulation characteristics of AFPM, and calculated signal optical eye diagrams at corresponding wavelengths after 9600 km with AFPM controllers at 160 km intervals.

modulation characteristics are shown in Fig. 7. Again, the negative chirp characteristic could be obtained by setting the resonance close to the exciton wavelength. However, due to the higher resonance required to obtain the 3 dB modulation depth with this type of design, the wavelength range over which it operates is lower than that of the AFPM, around 5 nm. The AFPM structure was fabricated and tested, and the resulting modulation characteristics, measured with the monochromator, are shown in Fig. 5. Although the required bias voltage was quite large, due to the diffusion of the Zn p-dopant into the MQW layers during this growth, the measurement shows that the required modulation depth is achievable with this structure. IV. SOLITON SYSTEM MODELING The modulator characteristics were then tested in a simulation of a 20-Gb/s soliton system. The pulse propagation was calculated using the split-step Fourier method, one of the most efcient techniques for numerically solving the

Fig. 7. Calculated intensity and phase modulation characteristics of SFPM, and calculated signal eye diagram after 9600 km with SFPM controllers at 160 km intervals.

nonlinear Schr dinger equation governing the evolution of o optical pulses in nonlinear, dispersive ber [23]. Initially, pulse transmission over 9600 km without modulators was considered, with unchirped 9.1 ps FWHM sech2 input pulses and 80 km amplier spacing. Optical bandpass lters, with Lorenzian transfer function [24] and bandwidth of 1.2 nm, were included at 160 km intervals as the only form of control. ps2 /km, The ber parameters were: dispersion, 1 W km and loss, dB/km. nonlinearity, With noiseless ampliers, it was found that attraction between neighboring solitons resulted in pulse collisions after 5000

1412

JOURNAL OF LIGHTWAVE TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 17, NO. 8, AUGUST 1999

Fig. 8. Calculated shapes of isolated soliton pulses with initial 9.1 ps FWHM, following transmission over 9600 km with EDFA ASE noise, 80 km amplier spacing, and 1.2 nm bandwidth optical lters at 160 km intervals (overlaid plots of 24 pulses).

(a)

km. Amplied spontaneous emission noise added to the signal by each amplier was then included in the model, with power spectral density given by [25] (1) where is the optical frequency, is Plancks constant, is the spontaneous emission factor, typical in practical ampliers, and is the gain of the amplier. Isolated pulses were transmitted over 9600 km to study the effect of GordonHaus jitter alone, separated from the effects of solitonsoliton interaction. In Fig. 8, 24 output pulses are plotted, overlaid to indicate the amount of timing jitter that results from the ASE noise, with no active control. The standard deviation ps, and of the pulse arrival time at the receiver was the standard deviation of the pulse peak power, normalized to 11.1%. the mean peak power, was Next, the characteristics of each modulator were used in turn to provide control to the pulses at 160 km intervals along the line in addition to the optical lters (Fig. 1). A drive voltage swing of 27 V was used, ber coupling and circulator losses of 2.0 and 1.0 dB, respectively, were assumed and the peak intensity of the pulses at the input of each modulator was set to 0 dBm. The simulations were carried out over a range of wavelengths, to determine the wavelength dependence of the regenerator performance. At each wavelength, a random sequence of pulses over 72 bit periods was used, to test the effectiveness of the control against both GordonHaus jitter and soliton-soliton interactions. From the resulting optical eye, shown in Fig. 7, it can be seen that the SFPM successfully controlled the solitons, preventing collisions and minimizing jitter due to ASE noise. However, the narrowband operating characteristics of this device resulted in successful control over a wavelength range <5 nm. Successful soliton control was shown to be possible over 15 nm with the AFPM, as can be seen from the optical eye diagrams of the signal after 9600 km transmission distance, plotted in Fig. 6. The standard deviation of the pulse jitter

(b) Fig. 9. Pulse characteristics after 9600 km transmission with AFPM control (solid lines) and transmission of single soliton pulse over 9600 km without AFPM control (dashed lines): (a) standard deviation of arrival time of pulses and (b) standard deviation of pulse peak powers normalized to average peak power.

and peak intensity uctuations are plotted in Fig. 9 together with the value for the single pulses controlled by lters alone (from Fig. 8). The minimum values of timing jitter and power 0.9 ps and 9.7% with AFPM uctuation were control, a clear improvement over the performance without modulators. Further improvement would be possible by optimising the bandwidth of the inline lters. It is interesting to determine the reasons for the reduced performance at the edges of this wavelength range. At the shorter wavelengths ( 1530 nm), the AFPM exhibits little intensity modulation. While the phase modulation successfully controls the timing of the pulses, there is no selective absorption of the noise between the pulses, and so the noise level remains high. This can be observed in both the eye diagram and the plot of in Fig. 9, in which the value is the same for controlled and uncontrolled pulses. The noise power is reduced as the signal is moved to longer wavelengths as a result of the increasing intensity modulation. At the longest wavelength

KILLEY et al.: DESIGN OF InGaAsP MQW FABRYPEROT MODULATORS

1413

in the operating range (>1545 nm), the modulator starts to operate with positive chirp, as the refractive index change with increasing bias becomes positive. The resulting timing jitter increases to 2.4 ps, and the combination of larger jitter and intensity modulation result in an increase in the pulse power 21% at 1550 nm. Between these two uctuation to wavelength extremes, however, the simulations demonstrate the potential effectiveness of the AFPM as a soliton controller. V. CONCLUSION The inherent polarization insensitivity of vertical cavity FabryPerot modulators makes their use as soliton controllers potentially attractive. In this work, it has been shown that, with optimized design, the characteristics of such devices would be suitable for this role. Design rules have been identied to achieve this. First, the reectivities of the cavity reectors should be sufciently high to obtain at least 3 dB intensity modulation depth. This removes much of the ASE noise between the solitons and reduces the interaction between neighboring pulses. Second, the resonance should be positioned at a wavelength close enough to the exciton, to achieve the negative chirp characteristic required for the phase modulation to control the soliton velocities. Using data obtained by electrooptic measurements of the MQW active layers, it was shown that both SFPM and AFPM designs could potentially operate successfully as soliton controllers, with a modulation depth of 3 dB, <3 dB intrinsic loss and negative chirp characteristic achievable in both cases. The AFPM was found to be the optimum conguration due to its wider optical bandwidth of around 15 nm, easing the tolerances on fabrication and temperature control; its structure was grown, and 3 dB modulation measured experimentally. Simulations of a 20-Gb/s system over transoceanic distances were carried out, indicating that the use of AFPM controllers could prevent the soliton collisions that occur at around 5000 km at this bit-rate, and maintain the pulse timing jitter standard deviation at below 1 ps. A reduction in the peak power standard deviation of the pulse peak powers, due to the ASE noise reducing effect of the intensity modulation, was also predicted. The use of efcient, polarization-insensitive control modulators and optimized dispersion management [26], [27], would make possible long-distance WDM transmission with 20 Gb/s or higher per-channel capacity. ACKNOWLEDGMENT The authors would like to thank Dr. G. Hill, Dr. M. Pate, and Dr. K. Dunwoody of the University of Shefeld, U.K., for device processing and Dr. P. Morkel and Dr. S. Desbruslais of Alcatel Submarine Networks Ltd. for helpful discussions. REFERENCES
[1] I. Morita, K. Tanaka, N. Edagawa, S. Yamamoto, and M. Suzuki, 40 Gbit/s single-channel soliton transmission over 8600 km using periodic dispersion compensation, Electron. Lett., vol. 34, no. 19, pp. 18631865, 1998. [2] L. F. Mollenauer, P. V. Mamyshev, and M. J. Neubelt, Demonstration of soliton WDM transmission at 6 and 7 10 Gbit/s, error free over

[3]

[4] [5]

[6]

[7] [8] [9]

[10]

[11]

[12] [13]

[14]

[15]

[16] [17]

[18] [19]

[20]

[21] [22] [23] [24]

transoceanic distances, Electron. Lett., vol. 32, no. 5, pp. 470471, 1996. D. Le Guen, A. OHare, S. Del Burgo, D. Grot, F. Favre, and T. Georges, Narrowband 640 Gbit/s soliton DWDM transmission over 1200 km of standard ber with 100 km 21 dB amplier spans, Electron. Lett., vol. 34, no. 24, pp. 23452346, 1998. J. P. Gordon and H. A. Haus, Random walk of coherently amplied solitons in optical ber transmission, Opt. Lett., vol. 11, no. 10, pp. 665667, 1986. M. Nakazawa, K. Suzuki, E. Yamada, and H. Kubota, Observation of nonlinear interactions in 20 Gbit/s soliton transmission over 500 km using erbium-doped ber ampliers, Electron. Lett., vol. 27, no. 18, pp. 16621663, 1991. L. F. Mollenauer, S. G. Evangelides, and J. P. Gordon, Wavelength division multiplexing with solitons in ultra-long distance transmission using lumped ampliers, J. Lightwave Technol., vol. 9, pp. 362367, Mar. 1991. H. Kubota and M. Nakazawa, Soliton transmission control in time and frequency domains, J. Quant. Electron., vol. 29, no. 7, pp. 21892197, 1993. M. Nakazawa, E. Yamada, H. Kubota, and K. Suzuki, 10 Gbit/s soliton data transmission over one million kilometers, Electron. Lett., vol. 27, no. 14, pp. 12701272, 1991. O. Leclerc, C. Duehet, P. Brindel, M. Goix, E. Grard, E. Maunard, and E. Desurvire, Polarization-independent InP push-pull MachZehnder modulator for 20 Gbit/s soliton regeneration, Electron. Lett., vol. 34, no. 10, pp. 10111013, 1998. M. Suzuki, H. Tanaka, N. Edagawa, and Y. Matsushima, New applications of a sinusoidal driven InGaAsP electroabsorption modulator to in-line optical gates with ASE noise reduction effect, J. Lightwave Technol., vol. 10, pp. 19121918, Dec. 1992. J. P. King, I. Harcastle, H. J. Harvey, P. D. Green, B. J. Shaw, M. G. Jones, D. J. Forbes, and M. C. Wright, Polarization-independent 20 Gbit/s soliton data transmission over 12500 km using amplitude and phase modulation soliton control, Electron. Lett., vol. 31, no. 13, pp. 10901091, 1995. G. Aubin, T. Montalant, J. Moulu, F. Pirio, J.-B. Thomine, and F. Devaux, 40 Gbit/s OTDM soliton transmission over transoceanic distances, Electron. Lett., vol. 32, no. 24, pp. 21882189, 1996. E. Brun-Maunand, P. Brindel, O. Leclerc, F. Pitel, and E. Desurvire, Parametric study of chromatic dispersion inuence in 20 Gbit/s, 20 mm regenerated soliton systems with up to 140 km amplier spacing, Electron. Lett., vol. 32, no. 11, pp. 10221023, 1996. M. Nakazawa, K. Suzuki, H. Kubota, A. Sahara, and E. Yamada, 5 channels) soliton transmission over 100 Gbit/s WDM (20 Gbit/s 10000 km using in-line synchronous modulation and optical ltering, Electron. Lett., vol. 33, no. 14, pp. 12331234, 1997. S. Chelles, R. Ferreira, P. Voisin, A. Ougazzaden, M. Allovon, and A. Carenco, Efcient polarization-insensitive electroabsorption modulator using strained InGaAsP-based quantum wells, App. Phys. Lett., vol. 64, no. 26, pp. 35303532, 1994. N. J. Smith, K. J. Blow, W. J. Firth, and K. Smith, Soliton dynamics in the presence of phase modulators, Opt. Commun., vol. 102, nos. 3/4, pp. 324328, 1993. M. Whitehead, A. Rivers, G. Parry, J. S. Roberts, and C. Button, Lowvoltage multiple quantum well reection modulator with onoff ratio greater than 100 : 1, Electron. Lett., vol. 25, no. 15, pp. 984985, 1989. S. J. B. Yoo, J. Gamelin, R. Bhat, C. Caneau, M. A. Koza, and T. P. Lee, High-speed 1.5 m asymmetric FabryPerot modulators, in Proc. Opt. Fiber Conf. (OFC96). A. J. Moseley, J. Thompson, M. Q. Kearley, D. J. Robbins, and M. J. Goodwin, Low voltage InGaAs/InP multiple quantum well reective FabryPerot modulator, Electron. Lett., vol. 26, no. 13, pp. 913915, 1990. T. H. Wood, J. Z. Pastalan, C. A. Burrus, B. C. Johnson, B. I. Miller, J. L. de Miguel, and U. Koren, Electric eld screening by photogenerated holes in multiple quantum wells: A new mechanism for absorption saturation, App. Phys. Lett., vol. 57, no. 11, pp. 10811083, 1990. H. A. Macleod, Thin-Film Optical Filters, 2nd ed. London, U.K.: Adam Hilger Ltd., 1986. K. Yamada, K. Nakamura, Y. Matsui, T. Krunii, and Y. Ogawa, Negative-chirp electroabsorption modulator using low-wavelength detuning, IEEE Photon. Technol. Lett., vol. 7, pp. 11571158, Oct. 1995. G. P. Agrawal, Nonlinear Fiber Optics, 2nd ed. New York: Academic, 1995. D. Atkinson, W. H. Loh, V. V. Afanasjev, A. B. Grudinin, A. J. Seeds, and D. N. Payne, Increased amplier spacing in a soliton system with

1414

JOURNAL OF LIGHTWAVE TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 17, NO. 8, AUGUST 1999

quantum-well saturable absorbers and spectral ltering, Opt. Lett., vol. 19, no. 19, pp. 15141516, 1994. [25] A. Yariv, Signal-to-noise considerations in ber links with periodic or distributed optical amplication, Opt. Lett., vol. 15, no. 19, pp. 10641066, 1990. [26] N. J. Smith, N. J. Doran, W. Forysiak, and F. M. Knox, Soliton transmission using periodic dispersion compensation, J. Lightwave Technol., vol. 15, pp. 18081822, Oct. 1997. [27] E. A. Golovchenko, J. M. Jacob, A. N. Pilipetskii, C. R. Menyuk, and G. M. Carter, Dispersion-managed solitons in a ber loop with in-line ltering, Opt. Lett., vol. 22, no. 5, pp. 289291, 1997.

Mark Whitehead, photograph and biography not available at the time of publication.

Paul N. Stavrinou, photograph and biography not available at the time of publication.

Gareth Parry, photograph and biography not available at the time of publication.

Robert I. Killey received the B.Eng. degree in electronic and communications engineering from Bristol University, Bristol, U.K., in 1992, the M.Sc. degree in microwaves and optoelectronics from University College London, London, U.K., in 1994, and the D.Phil. degree from Oxford University, Oxford, U.K., in 1998. He is now a Research Fellow in the Optical Networks Group at University College London. His research interests include WDM systems, all-optical routing, and optical devices.

Christopher C. Button was born in Ipswich, Suffolk, U.K., in 1957. He received the B.A. degree from the Open University, U.K., in 1988. In 1976, he joined the research laboratories of the Delta Metals Group, Ipswich, U.K., then moved on to join British Telecom Research Laboratories at Martlesham, U.K., in 1981. He has been employed at the EPSRC Central Facility for IIIV Semiconductors, the University of Shefeld, since 1988, where he is now a Research Fellow, responsible for MOCVD growth of phosphorus-containing compounds, and is currently setting up a capability for the growth of GaN and related compounds.