25 Gb/s Data Transmission Using a Directly Modulated InGaAlAs DBR Laser over 14 nm Wavelength Tuning Range

Daibing Zhou,Song Liang,Yiming He,Dan Lu,Wei Wang,Lingjuan Zhao

doi:10.3390/photonics8030084

Abstract

With the deployment of the fifth generation of mobile networks (5G), 25 and 100 Gb/s directly modulated lasers and modules will become the mainstream optical transmitters. A directly modulated InGaAlAs/InP distributed Bragg reflector (DBR) laser is fabricated by butt-joint technology. A 25 Gb/s data transmission over a single-mode fiber of up to 10 km is demonstrated, and a wavelength tuning range of 14.28 nm is achieved through injection current tuning of a DBR section and temperature control of a thermoelectric cooler (TEC), which is the best candidate of colorless light sources for wavelength-division-multiplexed passive optical network (WDM-PON) systems.

Highlights

With the deployment of the fifth generation of mobile networks (5G), in the few years, the demand for optical devices in 5G networks will mainly include three aspects: huge data throughput by optical devices, a wider operating temperature range, and low cost [1,2,3,4,5,6]
As the temperature changes from 10 to 49 ◦ C, the wavelength tuning range remains the same, and the degradation of the sidemode suppression ratio (SMSR) is less than 5%, and that shows that the InGaAlAs multiple quantum wells, as the active layer of the tunable laser, have good temperature characteristics and can achieve the consistency of performance at different tuning wavelengths at different temperatures
In order to increase the wavelength tuning range of the tunable distributed Bragg reflector (DBR) laser and expand the data transmission capacity of WDM communication systems, a variation of chip temperature can be used as an assistant, as in the case reported in this paper

Summary

Introduction

With the deployment of the fifth generation of mobile networks (5G), in the few years, the demand for optical devices in 5G networks will mainly include three aspects: huge data throughput by optical devices, a wider operating temperature range, and low cost [1,2,3,4,5,6]. Modulated lasers and modules with 25 and 100 Gb/s data transmission characteristics will become the mainstream optical transmitters. For the 5G fronthaul and data center, the demand for optical transmitter chips will increase rapidly. A wavelength-division-multiplexed passive optical network (WDM-PON) is the best solution for fronthaul due to the potential of low costs and high transmission capacity. InGaAlAs tunable distributed Bragg reflector (DBR) lasers have the advantages of compact size, easy wavelength tuning, superior temperature performance, and low fabrication cost, which are the best candidates of colorless light sources for WDM-PON systems [7,8,9,10,11,12]. Under DBR current tuning, the tuning range of the tunable laser is about

Methods

Findings

Discussion

Conclusion