Electro-photonics: An emerging field for photonic integrated circuits

Electro-Photonics combines the best of both electronics and optics to tackle the challenges of next generation optical communication networks in terms of capacity, flexibility, and energy efficiency. The optimal sharing of the processing work load between the electrical and optical domain brings considerable benefits to communication system complexity, performance, and construction as well as operational cost. As a key technology, photonic integrated circuits (PICs) play a critical role for the implementation of signal processing in the optical domain, serving for signal generation, switching, and acquisition. PICs point to advancing of network devices such as transmitters, receivers, and switches with desirable features of large bandwidth, high stability, precise control, easy tuning, and potential for low-cost fabrication by enabling miniaturization of complex optical systems on a chip scale. In this paper, we review the PIC research progress of the Monash Electro-Photonics Laboratory and its major contributions to the fields of optical communications and microwave photonics. We focus on applications in optical orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (O-OFDM), Nyquist wavelength division multiplexing (N-WDM), optical pulse manipulation, and programmable optical processors. The results of these works underline not only hardware fabrication capability and performance improvement for electrophotonics, but, more importantly, a new engineering paradigm that stimulates innovations in information and communication technologies.