Accurate Calibration and Measurement of Optoelectronic Devices

Frequency responses of optoelectronic devices are essential to obtain the precise performance of electrical-to-optical-to-electrical signal conversion or optical signal processing. We reviewed the development of optical or electrical measurement methods proposed for characterizing electrical/optical (E/O) devices, optical/electrical (O/E) devices and optical/optical (O/O) devices in the frequency domain from the perspective of accurate calibration standard. It has been found that full calibrated E/O or O/E measurement requires at least an optoelectronic thru standard for the conversion between optical and electrical domains, and an electrical port extension for de-embedding the error or adapter network of microwave source or detector. The indetermination problem still exists in most O/E and E/O device characterization, which appears in different forms for different measurement techniques. Nevertheless, it should be noticed that obtaining an optoelectronic thru standard can be transferred to characterizing a microwave source or detector in the electrical domain, and a precise electrical calibration standard is much easier to be obtained as compared with an optoelectronic calibration standard. Therefore, the calibration standard transfer from optical to electrical domain is a prominent approach to solve the indetermination problem.