Octave Bandwidth Analog Link with a Monolithic Laser/Electroabsorption Modulator

High linearity RF analog links are of great interest for remoting cellular radio and personal communications systems base stations. Electroabsorption modulators have been demonstrated to give high linearity when used in external modulation analog optical links1. Monolithically integrated laser/electroabsorption modulators have been demonstrated to be useful for long-haul multi-gigabit digital communications2,3. Integrated laser/modulators have been demonstrated for analog applications up to 10MHz4. In this paper, we demonstrate a monolithically integrated laser/electroabsorption modulator for high-frequency analog link applications. The monolithic laser/modulator is shown to offer good linearity with considerably reduced size and weight compared to an external electroabsorption modulator with a Nd:YAG pump laser.