Patent ID: 7058248

Claim:
An optical communication system comprising: a plurality of monolithic semiconductor transmitter photonic integrated circuit (TxPIC) chips each having a plurality of multi-wavelength channel signal sources comprising: a plurality of light sources, the peak wavelengths of light signals emitted by the light sources being different from each other; a plurality of electro-optical modulators each optically connected to one of the light sources and modulating its respective light signal; an optical combiner coupled to receive all of the outputs from the electro-optical modulators for multiplexing all of the modulated light signals and providing a combined multi-wavelength signal output; an Nx 1 optical combiner optically coupled to receive the multi-wavelength signal outputs from the TxPIC chips and combining them into a single signal output; and a booster amplifier coupled to receive and amplify the Nx 1 optical combiner output and launch the same onto an optical transmission medium.