Optics Communications 225 (2003) 307–311

www.elsevier.com/locate/optcom

A simple and stable method to generate ultra-short

optical pulse by using EAM and fibers
Jianjun Yu *

School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, 250 14th Street, Atlanta, GA 30318, USA
Received 5 February 2003; received in revised form 18 April 2003; accepted 29 June 2003

Abstract

Author will demonstrate a simple and stable method to generate ultra-short optical pulse by using electro-absorption
modulation (EAM) and fibers. Dual wavelength, high power ultra-short optical pulses are generated.
Ó 2003 Published by Elsevier B.V.

Keywords: Ultra-short optical pulse generation; Signal regeneration; Optical time division multiplexing; Optical filtering; Self-phase
modulation

1. Introduction EAM [1–8]: one is linear compression, other is

Generation of a simple and high extinction ratio
short pulse is a key technique for high-speed op-
tical time division multiplexing (OTDM) system
and networks. For 160 Gbit/s OTDM signal the
pulse width should be smaller than 2 ps and ex-
tinction ratio should be larger than 30 dB. Electro-
absorption modulation (EAM) is thought to be
one of the most practical return to zero (RZ) op-
tical sources; however, the pulse width is usually
larger than 20 ps when the EAM is driven by a 10
GHz sinusoidal electrical signal. Further com-
pression will be necessary before the signal can be
multiplexed into higher bit rate. There are two
methods to compress the pulse generated by the
*
Tel.: +1-404-894-5056.
E-mail address: jianjun.yu@ece.gatech.edu (J. Yu).
nonlinear compression. The signals after EAM
modulation is usually a chirp pulse, so it can be
compressed when the chirped pulse propagates
over the dispersion fiber or chirped fiber grating.
Negative chirp pulse will be compressed when it
propagates over the normal dispersion fiber and
positive chirp pulse will be compressed when it
propagates over the anomalous dispersion fiber;
this method is linear compression. However, the
method of the linear compression cannot regen-
erate the signal; it means that extinction ratio (ER)
of the signal cannot be improved. As we know that
the signals generated by EAM modulation usually
have small ER, it is necessary for us to regenerate
the signal if the signal will be used for high-speed
OTDM multiplexing. The other method is non-
linear compression. The technique of self-phase
modulation (SPM) in fiber and optical filtering can
be used to compress and regenerate the signal

0030-4018/$ - see front matter Ó 2003 Published by Elsevier B.V.

doi:10.1016/j.optcom.2003.06.001
308 J. Yu / Optics Communications 225 (2003) 307–311
[9,10]. In order to make pulsewidth smaller than 2
ps, usually a lot of fiber chains are needed to
compress the optical pulse. Recently, Boivin et al.
[9] put forward a method to compress pulse,
however, four fiber segments or two fiber chains,
two EDFAs and two tunable filters are used to
compress optical pulse. We put forward a novel
method to compress pulse in this paper. In our
experiment, we only use one EDFA, one WDM
filter and one fiber chain to compress and regen-
erate optical pulse; therefore, our method is much
simple and stable. Furthermore, the generated
short pulse has dual wavelengths and high power.
2. Experimental setup and results
Experimental setup for short pulse generation is
shown in Fig. 1. A 1551 nm continuous wave
(CW) lightwave generated from the distribute
feedback laser diode (DFB-LD) is modulated by a
LiNbO3 (LN) modulator with a pseudorandom bit
sequence (PRBS) of 231 –1 at 10 Gbit/s. An EAM is
used to carve the signal. After this EAM, the
pulsewidth of the signal is 20 ps and the eye dia-
grams are shown in Fig. 1. The measured spectrum
width of the signal is 0.2 nm; therefore, the time–
bandwidth product of the optical signal is 0.5, it
shows that the signal has a small chirp. If we as-
sume that the pulse is the Gaussian shape, the
signal chirp will be 0.53. Because the ER of the
EAM is only 8 dB, the ER of the eye diagram after
the EAM is small. Then the 20 ps RZ signal is
amplified to 21 dBm and injected the nonlinear
Fig. 1. Experimental setup.
fiber chain which contains three fiber segments.
The first dispersion shifted fiber (DSF1) and the
single-model fiber (SMF) are used to compress the
pulse and the DSF2 and the WDM filter are used
to further compress and regeneration signal. The
principle for utilizing SPM and optical filtering to
regenerate signal can be found in [10,11]. DSF1 is
a normal dispersion fiber with zero dispersion
wavelength of 1560 nm and has a length of 12 km,
dispersion slope of 0.06 ps/nm2 /km and the effec-
tive area of 30 lm2 . SMF is a standard single-
mode fiber and has a length of 2 km, dispersion of
17 ps/nm/km at 1550 nm, dispersion slope of 0.08
ps/nm2 /km and the effective area of 50 lm2 . The
dispersion of DSF1 is almost fully compensated by
that of the SMF. After the signal propagates over
DSF1 and SMF, the pulsewidth of the signal is 5
ps. We use DSF2 and optical filtering to further
compress and regenerate signal. DSF2 has a length
2.5 km, dispersion slope of 0.06 ps/nm2 /km, the
effective area of 30 lm2 and zero dispersion
wavelength of 1548 nm. The total loss of the fiber
chain is 4 dB; therefore, the optical power is 17
dBm after the signal propagates over the fiber
chain. Different from [1], we use an optical WDM
filter to filter the optical spectrum, two different
wavelength pulses can be obtained simultaneously.
The WDM filter bandwidth is 2.2 nm. [10] shows
that the transparent wavelength of the optical filter
must deviate from the center wavelength of the
signal at 1551 nm in order to realize signal re-
generation. Because the center wavelength of the
WDM filter from port 1 is shifted from the center
wavelength of the DFB-LD at 1551 nm, the signal
 J. Yu / Optics Communications 225 (2003) 307–311
is regenerated and the ultra-short optical pulse
with a very high ER and high average power of 11
dBm can be obtained after the WDM filter. The
large output power can be used to multiplex the 10
Gbit/s signal into a high-speed OTDM signal
without any other additional optical amplification.
Fig. 2 shows the signal eye diagram, self-harmonic
generation (SHG) trace and spectrum from port 1
(channel 1). The center wavelength of channel 1 is
approximately 1552 nm, the ER is larger than 20
dB, the pulsewidth is 1.6 ps and spectrum width is
Fig. 2. Signal from port 1. (a) Optical spectrum, (b) eye dia-
gram and (c) auto-correlator trace (2 ps/div).
309
2.2 nm. The time–bandwidth product of channel 1
is 0.44; it shows that the pulse is transform limited.
It also shows the ER of the compressed is largely
improved. The detail principle of the ER im-
provement is shown in [10]. Because the center
wavelength signal of the compressed signal at 1551
nm has not been suppressed after the port 2 of the
WDM filter, we use an additional optical filter
with a bandwidth of 1.6 nm to suppress the signal
at the center wavelength of 1551 nm; the output
Fig. 3. Signal from port 2. (a) Optical spectrum, (b) eye dia-
gram (10 ps/div) and (c) auto-correlator trace (2 ps/div).
310 J. Yu / Optics Communications 225 (2003) 307–311
signal after the optical filter is 10.2 dBm. Fig. 3
shows the signal eye diagram, SHG trace and
spectrum from port 2 (channel 2). The center
wavelength of channel 2 is approximately 1549
nm, the ER is 14 dB, the pulsewidth is 2.3 ps and
Fig. 4. Auto-correlator traces. (a) 40 Gbit/s, (b) 80 Gbit/s and
(c) 160 Gbit/s.
the spectrum width is 2.4 nm. The time–bandwidth
of channel 2 is 0.68; it shows that the channel has a
small chirp. Because the additional optical filter is
not sharp enough, the signal at the center wave-
length cannot be eliminated fully; therefore, a
small peak at 8 ps can be seen.
We use an optical multiplexer to configure a
high-speed OTDM source and only channel 1 is
used in this experiment. The auto-correlation tra-
ces and eye diagrams for 40, 80 and 160 Gbit/s
OTDM signals are shown in Figs. 4 and 5, re-
spectively. The multiplexed 160 Gbit/s OTDM
signal is demultiplexed by two cascaded EAMs
and the switching window for demultiplexing is 5.2
Fig. 5. Eye diagrams (10 ps/div). (a) 40 Gbit/s, (b) 80 Gbit/s
and (c) 160 Gbit/s.
 J. Yu / Optics Communications 225 (2003) 307–311
Fig. 6. BER performance. Inset: demultiplexed eye diagram (10
ps/div).
ps [12]. The bit error ratio (BER) performance
after demultiplexing is measured and shown in
Fig. 6. Comparing 10 Gbit/s back-to-back (B-T-B)
signal, the power penalty is 2.1 dB; the power
penalty is mainly caused by the adjacent channel
crosstalk because the switching window is not
narrow enough. The eye diagram of the demulti-
plexed signal from 160 Gbit/s signal is inserted into
Fig. 6; clear and open eye diagram is obtained.
3. Conclusion
Author has demonstrated a new method to
generate ultra-short optical pulse. Optical signals
311
with dual wavelength, pulsewidth of 1.6 and 2.3 ps,
high ER and high power have been realized. Au-
thor has also demonstrated that the ultra-short
optical pulse can be used as an optical source for
160 Gbit/s OTDM signal.
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