Semiconductor laser sources for externally modulated microwave analog links

High-performance semiconductor continous-wave (CW) sources are demonstrated in this paper, which include a Fabry-Perot (FP) laser oscillator (LO) with relative intensity noise (RIN) <-165 dB/Hz at frequencies above 500 MHz, and a tapered semiconductor optical amplifier with 35-dB gain, a maximum output power of 820 mW, and RIN/spl ap/-155 dB/Hz at microwave frequencies. These are used in suboctave-bandwidth analog links to demonstrate link performance comparable to that available with solid-state laser sources.