Error free 2.5 Gb/S transmission of a C-band tunable 8 dBm vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser over 815 km of conventional fiber

摘要

The micro-electromechanical vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (MEM-VCSEL) has a wide and continuous tuning range covering the whole C-band with nearly 8 dBm of power into a single-mode fiber. These devices have the side mode suppression and polarization extinction ratio well within the telecom standard. Used for transmitting a 2.5 Gb/s pseudo-random data stream in an 815 km long conventional fiber, these devices provide error free transmission with received power as lowas-30 dBm. The evolution of the eye diagrams and the bit error rate measurements are studied along the transmission link and compared with fixed wavelength DFB lasers. The results demonstrate that the widely tunable VCSELs are viable devices with performance specifications similar to that of the fixed wavelength DFB lasers.