Advances in Widely Tunable Lasers

Richard Schatz
Laboratory of Photonics
Royal Institute of Technology

Tunability of common semiconductor lasers

Widely tunable laser types
Syntune MGY laser: tuning principle & performance
Tunable modulation and wavelength conversion
The tunable transmitter of tomorrow

Why tunability?
Inventory reduction, sparing purposes
(
(cost
premium
i
around
d 20% compared
d to DFB)
Spectroscopy
Measurement equipment
Tomorrow: Wavelength routing?

Common Semiconductor Laser Types

FabryPerot

+ very simple
- multimode

DBR

Distributed
B
Bragg
Reflector

+ single mode
+ electric tunability
y ~ 10 nm
- two waveguide materials
- two contacts

DFB

Distributed
FeedBack

PS-DFB

PhaseShifted
Distributed
Feedd
Back

FP

VCSEL

+ simple
- thermal tunability ~4 nm
- inherently double mode
+ single mode
- thermal tunability ~4 nm
- more complicated
p
than DFB
- needs antireflection coating

Vertical
Cavity
Surface
Emitting
Laser

Tunability limited by

n
< 110 2
ng

+ on wafer testing: low cost

- thermal tunability~2 nm
- low power
- difficult transverse single mode
- difficult >1.2 m

Widely Tunable Lasers

NTT (8 DFB)
Fujitsu (8 DFB)
Furukawa (12 DFB)
Santur (MEMS-switch
12 DFB)

DFB array

Iolon, Nec,
Pirelli, Fujitsu,
Intel

External
cavity
laser
Tunable mirror or filter

JDSU (Agility)
Monolithic
DBR laser
with sampled
grating

SG-DBR
Bookham
DS-DBR
Syntune
MGY-laser

+ DFB technology
+ stable
- coupler loss
- chip size
- powe consumption

+ tuning range
+ spectral properties
- size
- tuning speed
- modulation speed

+ monolitic (incl. SOA &

modulator)
+ size
+ tuning speed
+ power consumption
+ control
- electrically induced
- phase noise

Jens Buus and Edmond J. Murphy, Tunable Lasers in Optical

Networks,Journal of Lightwave Technology, Vol. 24, Issue 1, pp. 5
4

Modulated Grating Y-branch Laser

fabricated by Syntune
Upper
Lower

Wide tuning by additive Vernier

effect using two slightly different
multi-peak reflectors

Upper reflector
MMI

Lower reflector

Common
phase

Gain

Front
facet

40 nm tunability with high side mode

suppression ratio and output power

SMSR > 40 dB
Output power > 10 dBm
Power variation < 1.5 dB without
compensation

Direct Modulation vs Modulator

+
Ibias+I

Ibias

Vbias+V
V

+ Simpler

+ Lower Chirp

+ Higher Output Power

+ Higher Extinction Ratio

+ Inherently Linear Modulation

+ Higher Modulation Bandwidth

(Radio over fiber applications)

Syntune S4500 C-band tunable 10 Gb/s

transmitter

Monolithically integrated MGY+SOA+MZM

Full C-band tuning (89 channels at 50 GHz spacing)
<100 ns switching time
>40dB SMSR
<2.5 GHz wavelength drift over life
>4dBm output power
<2dB dispersion penalty (-800 to +800 ps/nm),
<3.5 V driving voltage
>11dB extinction ratio
8

Directly Modulated MGY-laser using chirp

managed transmission
Chirp adjusted so that a
zero cause a phaseshift,
101 becomes 10-1
dispersion tolerant
External filter utilizes the
chirp to enhance
extinction ratio

Matsui et al.,Widely Tunable Modulated Grating Y-branch Chirped Managed Laser

postdeadline ECOC 2009
9

10 Gb/s over 200 km standard fiber using direct

modulation and chirp managed transmission
188 G
GHz bandwidth
ba dw dt
Error free 10 Gbit/s
transmission over 200 km
10-18 mW output power at
all wavelengths
11-12 dB Extinction ratio

Matsui et al.,Widely Tunable Modulated Grating Y-branch Chirped Managed Laser

postdeadline ECOC 2009
10

Tunable wavelength conversion (1530-1560 to 1530-1560)

at 10 Gb/s with MGY-laser integrated with SOA
Right reflector
SOA IFR

Gain

MMI
Common
phase

Left reflector

Utilising cross-gain modulation in SOA

Conversion efficiency 20-70%
Collaboration with University of Ghent

Chacinski et al. OFC 2007

11

Recent Advances in Widely Tunable

Lasers
Richard Schatz

Tunability of common semiconductor lasers

Widely tunable laser types
Syntune MGY laser: tuning principle & performance
Tunable modulation and wavelength conversion
The tunable transmitter of tomorrow

12

Packaged DFB-laser integrated with TrawellingWave Electroabsorption Modulator for 100 GbE

100 Gb/s NRZ PRBS 231-1

0 dBm average power
4.3 dB extinction ratio

13

Fiber Dispersion

Dispersive fiber

Distance 1/(Bitrate)2
10 Gbit/s: 65 km
40 Gbit/s: 4 km
100 Gbit/s: 650 m!

Adaptive dispersion
compensation needed but
still difficult to reach e.g. 65
km with 100 Gbit/s!

The solution?
14

Radio Evolution vs Photonic Evolution

1887
Spark gap
Transmitter
On-Off
keying

1903
First arc
transmitter
with
continuos
radio waves
FSK keying

1962

1970

First pulsed First CW

semiconductor semiconductor
laser
laser

1906
First radio
broadcast of
voice and
music

1914
First
coherent
radio
transmitter

AM
modulation

AM
modulation.

1915

1918

1933

1961

SSB
modulation

Superheterodyne
receiver

FM
modulation.
ation.

FM stereo
Broadcasting
Subcarrier
FM
modulation.

1970

1975

1985-1989

1987

First low loss

p
fiber
optical

First DFB
singlemode
laser

Research on
coherent
optical
receivers

First Erbiumdoped Fiber

Amplifier

Today fiber-optic systems for telecom still utilize simple on-off

keying and direct detection (Morse code and crystal receiver)
15

Radio systems today are the future for photonics

1991

1991

1994

1995

1998

1998

2001

GSM

WiFi

GPS

DVBS

ADSL

DVBT

UMTS (3G)

GMSK

OFDM or
CCK

CDMA

QPSK

DMT

W-CDMA

Code
Division
Multiple
Access

Quadrature
phase shift
keying

Discrete
multitone

OFDM
with QAM

Gaussian
Minimum
Shift
Keying

Orthogonal
frequency-division
multiplexing

Next generation
N
i optical
i l transmission
i i systems will
ill be
b
advanced digital radio systems at optical frequencies

16

Use more advanced modulation formats!

DQPSK, QPSK, QAM, OFDM, SCM, SSB...

Higher spectral efficiency

( lower modulation bandwidth for same bitrate)

Better tolerance to fiber dispersion

More wavelength channels per fiber (or higher bitrate for
same channel grid)
Lower bandwidth demands of electronics and photonics

17

Different carrier modulation formats

OOK
1bit/symbol

PSK
1bit/symbol

16-QAM
QPSK
2bits/symbol 4bits/symbol

Polarization multiplex yields another doubling of capacity

within same WDM channel
18

Optical QPSK system with Polarization Multiplex

(one channel in a WDM system)

Complex integrated
optical transmitters &
receivers will be needed
for low cost!

19

Multicarrier modulation formats

Optical Carrier
Subcarrier modulation
1-20 subcarriers, RF-generated
OFDM
Orthogonal Frequency
Division Multiplex
100-10000 subcarriers,
digitally generated.
Carriers orthogonal over
bitslot
CDMA
Code Division Multiple Access
Carriers consist of orthogonal digital code sequencies
instead of sinuses

200 THzk.10 GHz

200 THzk.10 MHz

20

10

Optical Subcarrier System for 100GbE

Compare with ADSL modem for high speed data over telephone line
High demands on linearity of modulator and detector
Integrated optical components needed for low cost
21

400km Transmission of 12.5 Gbit/s

Baseband and DVBT on 45 GHz Subcarrier
0

Tunable
Laser

-10
-20
-30
-40

IP data

Other signal,
e.g., DVBT

M-Z
Modulator

Mixer
Subcarrier
@ GHz

Upper
pp sideband
filtered out and
directly detected
with low speed
PIN detector

-50
1549.5

1550

1550.5

1551

Signal on fiber with IP

data in baseband and
DVBT on subcarrier

IP data

FBG

FBG

Other signal,
e.g., DVBT

Dispersion tolerant since only

one sideband is used

Residual lower
sideband is
filtered away by
receiver filter
22

11

Final conclusions
Monolithic 10 Gbit/s widely tunable lasers are today integrated with
modulators and manufactured at high volumes and low price
Monolithic devices offers fast tuning <100 ns over 40 nm. Can be
modulated with integrated modulator, direct modulation or optically
for direct wavelength conversion.
Selling point today compared to DFB is the inventory reduction.
Deployment today enables wavelength routing in the future.
Future tunable lasers will be integrated with modulators for
spectrally efficient modulation formats

23

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