Ten-year 3600% growth for semiconductor optical amplifiers

17 Jun 2002

A recently released study by ElectroniCast Corporation predicts that the global consumption of semiconductor optical amplifiers will expand from $17 million in 1996 to $642 million in 2006, an increase of over 3600% in ten years.

ElectroniCast's study, Semiconductor Optical Amplifier Global Market Forecast, predicts that the North American market, currently holding a 53% majority of consumption with $8.97 million in 1997, will fall to 49% of the world's total with a $316 million consumption figure in 2007. European consumption will blossom from $7.23 million last year to $197 million in 2007, but Europe's percentage of the world's consumer market will fall from 42% to 31%. Japan and the Pacific Rim is expected to rise from 5% of the world's share to 20%, increasing its consumption from $840,000 to $129 million.

Despite the prediction of a decline in European consumer market share, Northern Telecom's United Kingdom facility will be a major supplier to its Quebec facility and Alcatel's France location will import semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs) to its Texas location.

At first the primary use of the SOAs will be as optical switch elements in photonic switches, for optical cross-connect and in wavelength division multiplex links and other digital fiber optical transmission applications, but optical line amplifiers and wavelength converters using SOAs are expected to be a significant factor after 2001.

Photonic switch elements, currently accounting for 77% of the value share, are predicted to fall to 40% in 2006 but provide $258 million of the market. Wavelength converters, which in 1996 were only at the laboratory evaluation level, are expected to expand to 21% or $134 million.

Because semiconductor optical amplifiers are easiest to design and fabricate at shorter wavelengths, much of the early development of SOAs involved devices operating in the 860 nm band. However, the dominant predicted application is for fiber optic communication lines which tend to operate in the 1310 nm and 1550 nm bands. Much of the research and development on SOAs over the past three years has focused on bringing the devices to a commercial production performance and yield level.

The sample units produced by SDL in 1996 and 1997 lead to the possibility that multiple SOA diodes on a single chip will soon go beyond the laboratory prototype stage. Although multi-diode SOA technology is still in its early stages, cost and package compactness gains are expected to be obtained for photonic switch matrices, dense WDM amplifier modules, and other applications by integrating multiple SOAs on a single chip.