Title

4 x 2.5 Gb/s WDM-TDM laser source based on mode-locked semiconductor lasers

Abstract

Multiwavelength high speed optical signal sources will play an important role in novel wavelength-division-multiplexed and time-division-multiplexed (WDM-TDM) optical networks. These lasers will serve as sources of ultrashort optical pulses, with low absolute timing jitter and high correlated jitter between each wavelength channel. In this paper, a single- stripe GaAs/AlGaAs semiconductor traveling wave amplifier has been used to generate four modelocked WDM channels simultaneously, each transmitting 18 ps pulses at 2.5 GHz for an aggregate data transmission rate of 10 Gbit/s. The spectral separation of four wavelengths can be continuously tuned from 0.8 nm to 2.1 nm. Also, the four wavelengths can be varied over 18 nm while keeping the wavelength separation constant. We observed that by actively modelocking the laser diode, we can take advantage of the transient unsaturated gain to achieve stable multiwavelength lasing, in contrast to gain competition in cw lasers, which tends to prevent simultaneous laser operation at multiple wavelengths. In addition, enhanced phase correlation between pulse trains at each wavelength is observed owing to the use of single-stripe devices. This technology is critical in novel photonic networks utilizing combined WDM-TDM data formats.

Publication Date

12-1-1997

Publication Title

Proceedings of SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering

Volume

3075

Number of Pages

60-64

Document Type

Article; Proceedings Paper

Personal Identifier

scopus

Socpus ID

0031378395 (Scopus)

Source API URL

https://api.elsevier.com/content/abstract/scopus_id/0031378395

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