| The explosive growth in the information technology industry requires high-performance optical sources. In recent years, wavelength-tunable optical pulse sources are of interest for applications in optical instrumentation, communications, and sensing. This thesis demonstrates and analyzes the generation of wavelength tunable, picosecond pulses from mode-locked semiconductor fiber ring lasers. One structure using an intracavity electro-optic modulator and the other an injected optical control signal, are investigated and experimentally characterized. A single or superimposed linearly chirped fiber Bragg gratings are used to provide wavelength selectivity, tunability, and multi-wavelength operation. The semiconductor optical amplifier as the gain media makes it possible to obtain stable simultaneous oscillation of several wavelengths at any wavelength band with very small channel spacing. We have successfully generated picosecond pulses at one or two wavelengths over the reflection bandwidth(s) of the grating(s) by simply changing the modulation frequency. |
