Laser Mode Partition Noise Evaluation for Optical Fiber Transmission

An evaluation of the influence of mode partition noise on error rate performance in a high bit rate optical fiber transmission system is presented. First, it is experimentally clarified that the intensity in each longitudinal mode of a laser diode fluctuates, although the intensity for the total mode is constant. It is also established that this fluctuation causes degradation of the error rate performance after transmission through a long optical fiber. The fluctuation is named "mode partition noise." Next a simple model for the fluctuation is proposed. The characteristics of the fluctuation are discussed on the basis of this model. Optical waveform fluctuation is found to be introduced by mode partition noise in the course of transmission through a long despersive transmission medium. This optical waveform fluctuation and its frequency spectrum are calculated. Finally, the error rate performance is evaluated and specifications required for a laser spectrum to attain a given repeater spacing are clarified.     

Repeater spacing of 280 Mbit/s single-mode fiber-optic transmission system using 1.55 µm laser diode source

This paper describes an attainable repeater spacing for a high bit-rate single-mode fiber-optic transmission in the 1.55 μm wavelength region where laser mode partition noise comes to be significant. An expression for evaluating mode partition noise is given as the form involving the influence of laser spectral fluctuations under high bit-rate modulation, together with the intersymbol interference and the equalized pulse shape in tile optical receiver. After the validity of its numerical results is confirmed experimentally, the resulting evaluation of laser mode partition noise is connected to a systematic discussion on the attainable repeater spacing of a 280 Mbit/s fiber-optic transmission system operating at 1.55 μm, along with fiber loss versus dispersion tradeoffs. This discussion permits the attainable repeater spacing to be 60-70 km for the combination of a laser diode with 1.5-2.0 nm spectrum broadening and a fiber with the loss of 0.5 dB/km and the dispersion of 4-6 ps/km - nm.     

Laser mode partition noise in lightwave systems using dispersiveoptical fiber

Semiconductor laser mode partition noise (LMPN) can impair analog optical systems, but this phenomenon has not previously been well-characterized. Theoretical expressions for the noise spectra that result when light from a nearly single-mode or strongly multimode semiconductor laser is passed through a length of dispersive optical fiber are presented and have been tested experimentally. A widely used model is found to greatly overestimate the partition noise of a DFB laser; a model for the strongly multimode case is found to match experimental results for a multimode laser. It is observed that partition noise can be significant even for multimode lasers operating near the fiber dispersion minimum     

Performance implications of mode partition fluctuations in nearlysingle longitudinal mode lasers

A statistical model of mode partition fluctuations is developed for semiconductor laser diodes with a single dominant lasing mode and one vestigial side mode. It is the basis of a rigorous analysis of the influence of partition fluctuations on the performance of digital lightwave transmission systems. A Gauss quadrature rule is used to evaluate the average probability of error in the presence of mode-partition-dependent shot noise, photodetector multiplication noise, circuit noise, and intersymbol interference. This methodology permits the determination of reliable performance estimates enabling the establishment of permissible degrees of mode partition fluctuations     

On the injection laser contribution to mode partition noise infiber telecommunication systems

The injection laser can initially turn on in a side mode rather than in the main mode when the risetime of the driving current is short compared to the electron lifetime, causing mode partition noise in digital transmission systems which have wavelength dispersion between the laser and the receiver. It is shown that increased differential loss between the main mode and side modes reduces both the incidence and duration of side-mode turn-ons and is the most desirable approach to reducing mode partition noise. The needed differential loss is a strong inverse function of the signal pulse width. Gain compression has a lesser influence on the rate of occurrence of side-mode turn-ons. Quantitative results from a computer model indicate that significant numbers of such turn-ons occur even when the side-mode power during quiescent bias conditions never exceeds the main-mode power. Biasing slightly above threshold will always increase the pulse rate at which a given laser can be operated and provides an attractive goal for designers of laser transmitter packages     

Analysis of mode partition noise in laser transmission systems

Mode partition noise can be the dominant limitation on a system error rate for single-mode-fiber laser transmission systems. The distribution of power among the longitudinal modes of the laser fluctuates and, as a consequence of chromatic dispersion in the fiber, causes an amplitude fluctuation of the signal at the decision circuit in the receiver. The effect is in essence a pulse-delay fluctuation, and the error rate cannot be reduced by increasing the received signal power. We derive a simple formula describing this mode partition noise, give useful design relations, and verify the analysis by comparison with system experiments.     

The influence of mode partition fluctuations in nearly single longitudinal mode lasers

A simple relationship between the mode ratio of a two-mode laser and an empirical mode partition coefficient is derived. The effects of the mode ratio of a two-mode laser on the bit-error-rate floor of an optical fiber system are calculated, and the power penalties due to mode partitioning in the presence of Gaussian receiver noise are evaluated. The analysis provides a simple way to calculate the effects of mode ratio on the sensitivity of optical receivers.     

Intensity noise of semiconductor laser diodes in fiber optic analog video transmission

This paper presents an investigation of the effects of laser diode noise on analog video transmission in the HF and VHF bands, which resulted in the development of several designs of graded-index multimode fiber systems that can ignore reflection induced laser noise. The contents of the investigation include: 1) The evaluation of intrinsic laser noise of various laser structures and the evaluation of modulation effects on laser diode noise characteristics. It was found that the relative intensity noise (RIN) is less than -145 ∼ -150 [dB/Hz] when the modulation factor is less than 0.7 for index-guide mode stabilized lasers; 2) The quantitative evaluation of reflected laser beam effects on laser noise characteristics. The maximum laser-coupled reflected optical power that does not increase laser noise was determined as-65 ∼ -73 dB or less depending on the kind of laser structure; and 3) The evaluation of optical power reflected back into the laser in graded-index multimode fiber systems.     

1 Gbit/s transmission experiment over 101 km of single-mode fibre using a 1.55 ?m ridge guide C3 laser

Using a cleaved-coupled-cavity (C3) ridge guide laser which oscillates in a single longitudinal mode at 1.55 ?m wavelength, we report the first lightwave transmission experiment exploying single-frequency lasers at speeds above 500 Mbit/s. We have achieved digital transmission with a bit-error rate of 2 × 10?10 at 1.0 Gbit/s over 101 km of single-mode fibre. This represents a record for the length of unrepeatered optical transmission for bit rates greater than 500 Mbit/s. Evidence for an error-rate floor, presumably due to residual partition noise, is observed. No such floor was observed in an 84 km?1 Gbit/s experiment using the same C3 laser.     

单量子阱激光器小信号调制时的啁啾噪声

量子阱激光器具有良好的小信号调制频率响应 ,能作为高速光通信光源采用直接调制方式进行信号传输。与普通半导体激光器一样 ,直接调制将引起啁啾 ,从而影响光纤通信系统的性能。文中对小信号调制下单量子阱激光器的啁啾特性进行了研究和分析。得出了啁啾幅度和啁啾相位与调制频率的关系。对考虑与不考虑啁啾两种情况下 ,光脉冲在常规光纤中传输时的色散特性进行了模拟分析 ,发现了啁啾对系统的高阶色散有较大影响     

A WDM-PON Employing Fabry–PÉrot Laser Diodes Without a Seed Light Injection

We propose and demonstrate a wavelength-division-multiplexed passive optical network by employing double-contact Fabry-Perot laser diodes (F-P LDs) without a seed light injection. To avoid the high mode partition noise at low frequency, we use a binary phase-shift keying as a modulation format at a low relative intensity noise window. An error-free transmission is achieved by compensating a lasing envelope shift due to temperature variation with the double-contact F-P LD.     

Bidirectional SCM Transmission Using a Noise-Suppressed Fabry–Pérot Laser Diode and a Reflective Semiconductor Optical Amplifier in a WDM/SCM-PON Link

We have proposed and experimentally demonstrated a bidirectional hybrid wavelength-division-multiplexed/subcarrier-multiplexed (SCM)-passive optical network based on a noise-suppressed Fabry-Peacuterot laser diode (FP-LD) and a reflective semiconductor optical amplifier (RSOA). For downlink data transmission, an FP-LD with multiple wavelength characteristics was used, and the mode partition noise of the FP-LD was reduced using a gain-saturated SOA with high-pass filter characteristics. For uplink data transmission, the downlink optical source was reused and remodulated by an SCM method, using an RSOA. A bidirectional SCM link with radio frequencies (RFs) of 2.4 GHz in the downlink and 1.0 GHz in the uplink was implemented. To confirm the validity of the proposed configuration, a 16-quadrature amplitude modulation transmission experiment was performed on a 10-km bidirectional optical access link. The transmission performance was investigated by means of the error vector magnitude and RF spectrum     

半导体激光器模分配特性的研究

本文分析了半导体激光器模分配特性对光纤传输系统的影响,给出了模分配系数K的物理意义,计算了在不同误码率底线、不同波动程度、不同波长和不同的光源频谱下的系统传输速率和传输距离以及相应的功率代价。     

Semiconductor laser optical amplifiers for multichannel coherentoptical transmission

The application of semiconductor laser optical amplifiers in multichannel coherent optical transmission systems is investigated. The amplifiers considered (λ=1.3 μm) exhibit a gain of 24 dB at a grain ripple <2 dB and a 3-dB bandwidth of about 4000 GHz. The characteristics of these amplifiers and transmission experiments with these amplifiers are described. The investigations concern noise accumulation in an amplifier chain, generation of echoes due to backward gain in cascaded amplifiers, crosstalk in multichannel transmission, and the effect of gain saturation due to spontaneous emission. A good fit is shown between the advantages of multichannel coherent optical transmission systems and the properties of semiconductor laser optical amplifiers, which are very promising for future long-haul optical transmission systems     

Electrical noise measurements on laser diodes for monitoring of optical feedback and mode hopping

By measuring the wideband electrical noise voltage at the diode terminal, several laser characteristics can be monitored entirely without optical equipment. The letter describes the application of electrical noise measurements to the study of longitudinal mode hopping and optical feedback-induced noise from, for example, optical fibres.     

Mode partition in semiconductor lasers with optical feedback

The authors point out that random noise processes induce mode partition fluctuations in semiconductor lasers. Mode partition depends on laser parameters and modulation current. However, external optical feedback can also increase mode partition noise. Here, a numerical solution of multimode noise-driven rate equations with time-delayed terms is utilized to investigate mode partition in semiconductor lasers with reflecting feedback. Photon statistics of the main and side modes in semiconductor lasers under both CW operation and dynamic operation are considered. Probability-density curves for the main and side modes are shown. The feedback-induced change of photon statistics of the main and side modes is clearly seen. Numerical results indicate that, if the laser used is exposed to reflections, a more stringent mode discrimination requirement for suppressing the buildup of laser-cavity longitudinal side modes may result. If mode discrimination is insufficient for avoiding the excitation of side modes, the feedback-induced power penalty depends on the fiber dispersion     

Effect of carrier lifetime on mode partition noise in multimodesemiconductor lasers

The dependence of mode partition noise (MPN), and its association with the eye diagram and power penalty, on carrier lifetime in 1.3 μm InGaAsP multimode semiconductor lasers for a 1.2 Gbit/s lightwave transmission system was investigated. It was found that lasers with shorter carrier lifetimes showed less MPN, and hence, a better eye opening and a lower power penalty, than the lasers with longer carrier lifetimes. The significant dependence of MPN, eye opening, and power penalty on carrier lifetime in multimode semiconductor lasers suggests that the carrier lifetime of the laser, which depends on the laser design, can be used as an important parameter for characterizing the performance of high-speed lightwave transmission systems     

Equalization and mode partition noise in all-plastic optical fiberdata links

High-speed, short-distance data transmission over all-plastic step-index fiber (plastic optical fiber, or POF) is normally considered to be limited by intermodal dispersion. Theoretical calculations in this letter show that the baseband frequency response can be significantly improved using simple linear equalization. However, as the fiber length is increased, the sharp absorption attenuation peaks of PMMA fiber can potentially introduce mode partition noise. The bounds on practical laser characteristics and fiber lengths are explored; these results indicate that 530-Mb/s transmission over 100 m of 1-mm-diameter POF is feasible, thus potentially satisfying a significant segment of future computer interconnect applications     

Noise properties of injection lasers due to reflected waves

This paper describes the theoretical investigation of the origin, qualitative, and quantitative properties of the low frequency noise appearing in the light output of the laser diode, which is strongly coupled to optical fibers. This kind of noise has caused serious problems for reliable optical communications, especially for analog-modulation systems. It is shown that there are two different phenomena which generate such noise. One of them is the double cavity state, and the other is the external light injection state. The cause of our noise considered in the double cavity state is the phase variation due to the variation of the equivalent length between the laser and the reflection point generated by mechanical vibrations. On the other hand, the cause in the external light injection state is the random generations of locking and unlocking states due to the frequency variation (or mode jumping) caused by the variation of the internal temperature of the laser diode. We conclude from our theory that an effective method to reduce such noise is to operate the laser diode at well above the threshold current. The complete elimination will be attained by use of the optical isolator inserted between the laser diode and the transmission lines.     

Noise caused by semiconductor lasers in high-speed fiber-opticlinks

Theoretical and experimental results are presented for the signal-to-noise (S/N) ratio caused by mode partition noise, intensity noise, and reflection-induced noise in optical data links. Under given conditions an additional noise source with a S /N ratio of 20 dB will cause a power penalty of 1 dB in order to maintain a 10^-9 bit error rate. From numerical simulations the authors predict the maximum allowable dispersion in the presence of mode partition noise to be approximately 40% of a clock period. This figure is almost independent of bit rate and laser structure and agrees well with the measurements and with results of other workers. Numerical simulations of a buried-heterostructure and a TJS laser were carried out at four bit rates from 565 Mbit/s to 4.5 Gbit/s and the measurements were done at 2.2 Gbit/s using a TJS laser