Patent ID: 7123786

Claim:
An optical-to-electrical-to-optical converter comprising: a monolithic receiver photonic integrated circuit (RxPIC) InP-based chip comprising an optical waveguide formed in the chip from a chip input to receive a first multiplexed channel signal comprising a plurality of multiplexed transmitter channel signals forming a transmitter wavelength grid approximating a first standardized wavelength grid from an optical link and provide the same to an input of an integrated arrayed waveguide grating (AWG); the AWG having a wavelength grid with a passband substantially matching the first standardized wavelength grid and optically coupled to receive the multiplexed channel signals from the optical link and demultiplex the optical channel signal into a plurality of channel signals; the AWG having a plurality of optical waveguides at its output to respectively receive the demultiplexed channel signals, each of the AWG output waveguides having an integrated photodetector for detecting the optical channel signal and produce a corresponding electrical channel signal; an electronic regenerator for receiving each of the corresponding electrical channel signals, amplifying and regenerating the corresponding electrical channel signals to an original signal waveform to produce a plurality of regenerated electrical channel signals; a monolithic transmitter photonic integrated circuit (TxPIC) InP-based chip having an array of optical waveguides formed in the chip that are coupled as inputs to an arrayed waveguide grating (AWG); each of the optical waveguides including an integrated modulated source operating at an optical channel wavelength approximating a second standardized wavelength grid; each regenerated electrical channel signal provided to a respective modulated source that modulates a respective optical channel wavelength according to the regenerated electrical channel signal to produce a corresponding optical channel signal; the TxPIC AWG having a wavelength grid with a passband substantially matching the second standardized wavelength grid of the modulated sources and that multiplexes the modulated channel signals to provide a second multiplexed channel signal at its output for off-chip optical coupling to another optical link.