Monolithically integrated balanced photodetector and its application in OTDM 160 Gbit/s DPSK transmission

The design and fabrication of a monolithically integrated balanced photodetector module is reported and its application in a single polarisation 160 Gbit/s OTDM transmission experiment with RZ-DPSK modulation format. The 2.5 dB improvement in receiver sensitivity enabled transmission over a record fibre link of 410 km using exclusively EDFAs.