Characterization of Frequency Drift of Sampled-Grating DBR Laser Module Under Direct Modulation

The authors demonstrate the drift in frequency of a static sampled-grating distributed Bragg reflector (SG DBR) laser module when it is subjected to direct modulation. The magnitude of drift and its settling time is characterized as a function of the index of modulation. Results show that when the directly modulated SG DBR is optically filtered, as in a dense wavelength-division-multiplexed system, a power penalty of 6.7 dB is incurred in comparison to the unfiltered case.