Intensity Noise Distribution of Semiconductor Lasers Measured Using Bit-Error-Rate Testers

Abstract

Laser noise has been well studied both theoretically and experimentally. Most of the previous experimental work examined the standard deviation of the noise, with the implicit assumption of a Gaussian noise distribution. We employ a new approach to measure the semiconductor laser noise distribution down to a bit-error ratio (BER) of <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$10 ^-11$</tex> . This method takes advantage of the high sampling rate of modern BER testers. We found that the noise distribution for a 1310-nm Fabry–PÉrot laser and a 1550-nm distributed-feedback laser are well fitted by Gaussian distributions.