Frequency agile high-speed WDM applications of widely tunable semiconductor lasers

Fiber optics has become the core of current telecommunications and data networking infrastructures. The dream of sources for wide-bandwidth networks today is a low-cost, single-mode, fast broadly-tunable long wavelength semiconductor laser. All-optical applications such as optical label swapping, IP-over-WDM and fast broad-band conversion will truly rely upon existence of fast frequency agile transmitters and wavelength conversion. In this Thesis we describe experimental approach to high-speed all-optical and WDM application requiring fast widely-tunable semiconductor lasers. Fast switching of a GCSR laser between a large number of ITU channels within 5ns switching time was demonstrated. Wavelength conversion of 10GB/s signal together with simultaneous switching of the output wavelength at a rate equivalent to 2.5 GB/s was also performed with a small power penalty. The complexity of widely-tunable multi-section lasers make their rigorous analysis extremely hard, but still possible with a time-dependent Transfer-Matrix Method (TMM). A model utilizing TMM was developed and results are compared with the experimental ones. 4-channel digitally controlled fast switching module was designed and integrated on a printed circuit board with a standard 14-pin butterfly package. Lifetime and aging studies performed indicate that room temperature lifetimes on the order of 15–30 years are realistic for multi-section semiconductor lasers. This dissertation deals with these and other aspects of high-speed applications of widely-tunable multi-section semiconductor lasers.