Recent progress and future prospect of optical communication systems using InP based opto-electronic devices

Since the very early research and development stage of optical fiber communication systems in mid 1970's, their performance has been drastically and continuously improved. For example, the transmission bit-rate and the transmission distance product of optical fiber communication systems has progressed more than million times over the 20 years. There were many factors behind the progress. Strong demand for the increase of the transmission capacity in the world-wide scale has emerged with the expansion of internet and multi-media communications in recent 10 years. Technologies have responded quite well to this demand. Among them, opto-electronic devices based on InP material systems have been playing an important role as key components of long wavelength optical fiber communication systems. In this talk, the progress of the opto-electronic device technologies throughout recent 10 years will be reviewed from view points of applications to optical fiber communication systems. New directions of the optical communication systems, point-to-point transmission to photonic networks, and the related devices will also be discussed.