Accelerated aging studies of multi-section tunable GCSR lasers for dense WDM applications

The first accelerated aging study of wavelength tunable packaged sampled grating reflector (GCSR) lasers is reported. Stable power and SMSR were observed during the 5000 hours of operation at elevated temperatures. Frequency shifts of the selected lasing channels were characterized to access potential failures in an optical network. A longer burn-in was found to significantly reduce the amount of the observed shifts, and hence increase the reliability of the device. The effective room-temperature lifetime of GCSR is estimated to be 13.4 y. A new end-of-life criteria is also proposed.