Design and analysis of widely tunable sampled grating DFB laser diode integrated with sampled grating distributed Bragg reflector

A new widely tunable laser diode structure that requires only two tuning currents is proposed. The laser diode consists of a sampled grating distributed feedback (SGDFB) laser diode monolithically integrated with a sampled grating distributed Bragg reflector (SGDBR). The phase control sections are properly inserted between the grating bursts of the SGDBR and SGDFB sections for the discrete and continuous tuning. To confirm the feasibility of the new structure, the split-step time domain model is used. The simulation result for a particular design shows that the tuning range as wide as 27 nm is possible with side-mode suppression ratio exceeding 35 dB. Furthermore, the output power is larger than that from SGDBR laser diodes with similar parameters.