Potential low cost/high volume Fabry Perot laser for analogue applications

An area of optoelectronics receiving much attention is the development of components suitable for analogue application. Two notable areas dominate: (i) cable TV, and (ii) microwave analogue links at frequencies up to 18 GHz for a whole range of applications. For many requirements, such as cable TV 'backbone' link replacement employing AM (VSB) schemes, the extreme performance demands from the laser source may well prove prohibitive for volume implementation: laser relative intensity noise (RIN) figures as low as -160 dB/Hz (-150 min) and harmonic distortion better than 55 dB are necessary if an overall system signal/noise budget of 55 dB is to be achieved for greater than 20 channels. This paper discusses the characteristics of a high speed Fabry Perot laser with a bandwidth in excess of 6 GHz and good RIN and linearity performance. The device is based on BT&D's fully packaged MOVPE grown buried heterostructure (BHET) FP laser and shares all the properties of this device: long operating life, good high temperature performance, stable hermetic package etc., but is modified for high speed.<
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