Source: Electronic Instrument Handbook

Chapter

Lightwave Signal Sources

22
Waguih Ishak
Agilent Technologies
Palo Alto, California

22.1 Introduction: Fiber-Optic

Communications Systems
Fiber-optic communications developed very rapidly in the past two decades.
Many systems have been installed and many others are planned in the United
States, Europe, and Japan. These systems clearly compete very well with the
traditional communications systems as a cost-effective means for information
exchange. Fiber-optic systems typically operate at hundreds of megabits per
second, and new systems operating at 2.4 Gbit/s are now being installed. At the
same time, research laboratories around the world are developing multi-Gbit/s
components and systems with potential for terabit per second communications
links in the late 1990s.
In addition to the increase in the data rates over fiber-optic networks, the
performance of the devices, components, and subsystems used in such networks
is improving at a very high rate. For example, a semiconductor laser needed in
an optical amplifier system must have a mean time between failures (MTBF) of
more than 100,000 h. If the amplifier is used in the submarine cable (transatlantic
or transpacific), the laser must be reliable to withstand severe operating
conditions (temperature, humidity, pressure, etc.). In addition to developing
high-performance components, the trend continues toward lowering the effective
cost per bit and mile of information. As a result, the designers of lightwave
devices, components, and subsystems are faced with a challenge. They need to
maximize the performance of each system building block, minimize the adverse
interactions between these blocks, and at the same time design for
manufacturability and cost-effectiveness. In order to help the designers achieve

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 Lightwave Signal Sources

22.2 Chapter Twenty-Two

Figure 22.1 A block diagram of a fiber-optic communication system.

these goals, new measurements and characterization techniques are needed in

the area of lightwave communications test instrumentation.
The small size, large bandwidth, and very low attenuation of optic fibers
make them attractive as alternatives to conventional copper cables in
telecommunications applications such as telephone and CATV systems and in
data communications applications such as computer interconnects systems.
A basic communications system consists of a transmitter, a receiver, and an
information medium as shown in Fig. 22.1a. The transmitter is a system capable
of generating the information to be sent to the receiver. The information can be
in analog or digital format. The transmission medium carries the information
over some distance and delivers it to the receiver. The receiver interprets the
information and transforms it into an accessible form. In the case of the fiber-
optic communications system, the transmitter is an optical source (laser or light-
emitting diode, LED) which is modulated with the information to be transmitted.
Optical sources can be modulated internally (by varying their operating currents)
or externally (by using an external optical modulator following the optical source).
The transmission medium is an optic fiber and the receiver is a photodetector,
as shown in Fig. 22.1.
An actual fiber-optic communications system uses many more electrical and
optical components than mentioned above. Examples include optical isolators,
optical polarization controllers, fiber couplers, optical filters, optical connectors,
electronic demodulators and amplifiers, and electrical signal generators.

Types of fiber-optic communications systems. State-of-the-art-fiber-optic

communications systems use semiconductor lasers as the optical source. If the
data rate is below a few Gbit/s, the lasers can be modulated by varying their
bias current. However, if the data rate is in excess of 10 Gbit/s, an external
optical modulator (such as a lithium niobate Mach-Zehnder modulator) is coupled
to the laser source. The fiber can span large distances (for example, the
transatlantic fiber link is more than 6000 km) and repeaters will be needed to
boost the signal level above the noise. In most of the installed fiber systems,
these repeaters are electronic repeaters which transform optical signal to an
electrical signal using a photodetector (O/E converter), amplify the electrical
signal using electronic amplifiers, and then convert the electrical signal back to

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 Lightwave Signal Sources

Lightwave Signal Sources 22.3

an optical signal using a laser (E/O converter). These repeaters limit the data
rate on the fiber because of the limited electronic amplifier band-widths. At the
end of the communications channel, the receiver consists of a photodetector,
which converts the optical signal to electrical signal, followed by an amplifier to
boost the signal level and a demodulator to decode the information. In such a
system, the information determines the data rate and the laser wavelength
determines the carrier frequency. For example, a typical system will use a laser
operating at 1.3 µm wavelength corresponding to a carrier frequency of about
176 THz (176,000 GHz), and the information will modulate the laser at a rate of
560 MHz.
The invention of optical fiber amplifiers (erbium-doped fiber amplifiers,
EDFAs) has changed the way fiber-optic communications systems are
configured. As will be described later, commercially available EDFAs can boost
an optical signal level by 30 dB or more over a significantly wide band (1530 to
1570 nm). The use of EDFAs as signal boosters at the transmitter and as
preamplifiers across the fiber and at the receiver should eliminate many of
the repeaters needed in the conventional systems described above. This is
significant because these repeaters do not allow the option of varying the data
rate over the communications system. However, the EDFAs, with their
extremely wide band, will make the fiber-optic communications system
upgradable without major changes in the configuration. In addition, since the
EDFA is a small (few inches cubed) system which can be easily coupled to the
transmission fiber, it will be possible to use a large number of EDFAs in the
system, allowing longer transmission distance. Recently, AT&T demonstrated
a 9000-km undersea system using 300 EDFAs uniformly spaced along the
fiber length.
Another development is the emergence of wavelength division multiplexing
(WDM) as a means for increasing the capacity of fiber-optic communications
systems. In WDM systems, the transmitter consists of several laser sources
operating at different wavelengths. The laser outputs are modulated and
multiplexed for transmission over the same optical fiber. At the receiver, a
demultiplexer is used to separate the channels for the appropriate
photodetector circuit as shown in Fig. 22.2. In a typical system, single-mode
semiconductor lasers are used with wavelength separation of a few nanometers
(corresponding to hundreds of GHz) and EDFAs are used as signal boosters
along the fiber. In future systems, it is expected to use channel separation of a
few GHz.
Coherent fiber-optic communications systems (Fig. 22.3) are useful for
applications requiring high sensitivity and enhanced selectivity between the
various transmitted channels. These systems, which are similar to the
heterodyne radio communications systems, consist of a transmitter which is
either frequency- or phase-modulated using frequency shift keying (FSK) or
phase shift keying (PSK) techniques. The modulated signal is transmitted
over the fiber and then received using a heterodyne, or homodyne, receiver.
The receiver requires an optical local oscillator which is used to mix with the

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 Lightwave Signal Sources

22.4 Chapter Twenty-Two

Figure 22.2 A block diagram of a WDM fiber-optic communication system.

incoming signal to subtract the carrier frequency. The detected signal is

enhanced by the optical power from the local oscillator, hence the improvement
in sensitivity.
As the technology advances, however, and as the trend toward lowering the
effective cost per bit and kilometer of information continues, the designers of
fiber systems need to maximize the performance of each system building block
and minimize adverse interactions in order to optimize the system’s overall
performance. New techniques and tools are needed to help design, manufacture,
test, and support these systems and components.

Figure 22.3 A block diagram of a coherent fiber-optic communication system.

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 Lightwave Signal Sources

Lightwave Signal Sources 22.5

One of the most important lightwave test instruments is an optical source

capable of producing a high-quality optical signal with enough power and
wavelength tuning range to test optical components and subsystems. It is
highly desirable, by design and test engineers, to have an optical source
instrument which can be programmed (manually or under computer control) to
produce a stimulus optical signal, tunable over a certain wavelength range
(typically centered around 850, 1330, or 1550 nm). Design and test engineers
use such an instrument as the input source to their device (or subsystem) under
test where the output from the device (or subsystem) under test is connected to
an optical receiver (such as a power meter) to measure insertion and return loss
vs. wavelength. The accuracy and stability of the signal wavelength generated
by an optical source instrument are very important in optical device
characterization. Therefore, such an instrument must contain appropriate
circuitry to ensure stable (typically within 0.01 nm over several hours) and
accurate (typically better than 0.01 nm) optical signals.
In its simplest configuration, an optical signal source can consist of a single-
frequency semiconductor laser (such as a distributed feedback laser, DFB) with
the appropriate circuitry to control the injection current to the laser. In
addition, the laser can be thermally stabilized by controlling its temperature.
Although this optical source can be useful on an optical bench, it is severely
limited by the narrow tuning range of DFB lasers (typically a few nanometers).
Moreover, the linewidth of the optical signal from such a source is in the order
of a few MHz, which makes it inappropriate for some test applications, such as
noise measurements which require an optical signal with less than 100-kHz
linewidth.
To increase the tuning range of the DFB-based optical sources, a bank of
lasers, each emitting at a different wavelength, can be used. While it is possible
to cover a wide tuning range utilizing this technique, it is difficult to avoid
tuning gaps. In addition, different DFB lasers will have different output power
and different linewidth, resulting in a complex instrument design to compensate
for the various laser outputs.
This chapter focuses on tunable external cavity lasers (ECLs) as the most
general class of optical signal generators. It is possible to build ECL systems
with tuning ranges in excess of 100 nm, high output power (>1 dBm), and very
narrow linewidth (<100 kHz).

22.2 External Cavity Laser Fundamentals

External cavity lasers have been known as tunable sources for a long time and
are often used in lab measurements. An ECL simply consists of a semiconductor
laser chip placed in the external cavity of a diffraction grating as shown in Fig.
22.4. The semiconductor laser chip is a Fabry-Perot laser diode in which the
internal laser resonator is disabled by an antireflection coating on one laser
facet. The resonator is then built by adding an external reflector, the diffraction

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 Lightwave Signal Sources

22.6 Chapter Twenty-Two

Figure 22.4 External cavity laser configuration.

grating. The grating acts both as a plane mirror and as a wavelength-selective

element.
The performance of the ECL is determined to a large extent by the external
cavity formed between one surface of the semiconductor laser chip and the
surface of the diffraction grating. The laser output power, single-mode
operation, tuning linearity, and wavelength stability are strongly related to
the components used in the external resonator. Since most of these components
are temperature-dependent, the entire cavity and the laser chip must be
temperature-stabilized.
Most ECLs produce an output spectrum which is multimode. While this may
be useful in some component testing applications, it is highly desirable to have
a single-mode output. Several techniques have been proposed to address this
issue including adding a side-mode filter, which is a very narrow band wavelength
filter that increases the wavelength selectivity compared to just a diffraction
grating alone. However, the operation of the ECL requires the side-mode filter
to be synchronously tuned with the diffraction grating, an operation performed
by the control circuitry of the ECL.
Figure 22.5 explains the principle of operation of a single-mode ECL. The
grating is tuned by rotation, so the wavelength where the reflection is maximum
is dependent on the angle of incidence of the emitted laser beam. The external
cavity laser resonator with its comblike filter characteristic will allow a large
number of possible lasing wavelengths. These possible lasing modes are called
“cavity modes.” The spacing between two modes is determined by the resonator
length and can be easily calculated. The cavity length is usually chosen to meet
other requirements within the system (such as sizes and characteristics of the
other optical components, the desired ECL linewidth, and the system size
limitations).
The diffraction grating filter bandwidth is determined by the optical beam

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 Lightwave Signal Sources

Lightwave Signal Sources 22.7

Figure 22.5 Principle of operation of external cavity lasers.

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 Lightwave Signal Sources

22.8 Chapter Twenty-Two

diameter, the mechanical layout of the filter, and the spacing of the rulings
imprinted into the grating. From Fig. 22.5, it is easy to see that with just a
diffraction grating, a more or less undefined mode is selected. Looking at the
external cavity mode spacing and the filter characteristic of the diffraction
grating, it is clear that a single-mode output is not guaranteed at all wavelengths
because several modes have comparable gain conditions and are able to lase.
The situation can be improved if the semiconductor laser chip has a flat and
smooth (ripple-free) gain characteristic. Although good antireflection coatings
can help achieve such characteristics, it is impractical to cover a very wide range
greater than 100 nm of tuning using this solution.
To improve the wavelength selectivity of the external cavity, the side-mode
filter is added to the cavity. The filter should be at least 10 times more selective
than the stand-alone grating and should have nearly no feedback loss and easy
wavelength tunability. This can be achieved by using a solid-glass Fabry-Perot
etalon with a typical bandwidth of 0.1 nm (compared to 1 nm for the stand-
alone grating).
Adjustment of the external cavity to produce a specific output wavelength
consists of selecting the appropriate angles for both the grating and the
sidemode filter. To allow continuous tuning, the reflection curve of the
diffraction grating, the transmission maximum of the filter, and the resonant
modes of the external cavity laser resonator are all shifted by the same
wavelength increment.

22.3 Design Challenges

External cavity laser sources are very sensitive to external influences such as
temperature fluctuations. Temperature changes cause changes in the optical
length of the resonator, resulting in a change in the output frequency of the laser.
A wavelength stability of 100 MHz (centered around the optical carrier frequency
of about 230 THz) translates into a maximum of 1 pm change in the length of the
resonator. A combination of careful optomechanical design of the resonator and a
very accurate calibration procedure is needed to achieve this stability.
Another challenge is the high-reliability requirement for optical signal
generators. Since the most critical component inside the laser cavity is the
semiconductor laser chip, precautions such as hermetically sealing the
semiconductor laser chip must be taken to ensure a long lifetime for the signal
generator. In addition, the laser cavity must be kept in a humidity-resistant
environment to avoid condensation on the optical surfaces of the optical
components inside the laser cavity which can dramatically deteriorate the
performance of the signal generator.
An important characteristic of optical signal generators is their ability to
produce fast tuning speeds. For example, in a manufacturing environment, it is
highly desirable to test optical components by stepping the wavelength of the
optical signal generator at speeds of 5 to 10 nm/s. This means that within 100 to
200 ms the new wavelength and power level must be settled and stabilized at

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 Lightwave Signal Sources

Lightwave Signal Sources 22.9

the output of the signal generator. In order to achieve such a tuning speed, a
clever design of the motor driver circuitry is needed. To rotate the grating to
change the wavelength of the laser, a precise stepper motor with a control board
is used. Microstepping (about 10,000 microsteps per revolution) provides a
mechanical resolution of 50 nm, and a precision switch is used to provide an
absolute reference point needed to bring the motor to the right position after a
power shutdown.
Another motor is needed to drive the single-mode filter. To ensure single-
mode operation for the signal generator, the filter must be well synchronized
with the grating drive. A dc motor with an encoder can be used to drive the
filter. The control board for the motor receives its control signals from a central
microprocessor board, which also sends control signals to the stepping motor of
the grating.

22.4 Specifications
Wavelength range. The tuning range of an external cavity laser is ultimately
limited by the width of the gain curve of the semiconductor laser chip (upper
trace in Fig. 22.2). In order for the ECL to lase, the semiconductor laser must
supply enough gain to overcome the losses of the other components in the cavity
(lenses, reflections from grating, side-mode filter). In the near-infrared region
(1.3 and 1.55 µm), typical wavelength ranges are 20 to 80 nm.

Wavelength accuracy. This parameter is determined by the accuracy of the

grating angle and hence by the algorithm used to rotate the grating. It is limited
by the resolution of the stepping motor used to rotate the grating. A typical
accuracy number is ±0.1 nm.

Wavelength stability. This parameter is defined as the change in the output

wavelength over a period of time (typically 1 h). It is a function of the stability of
the components used inside the cavity (semiconductor laser, lenses, sidemode
filter, etc.). A typical number is 0.02 nm/h.

Wavelength resolution. The wavelength resolution is determined by the

resolution of the angle rotation of the grating, and hence the resolution of the
stepping motor. Using stepping motors with more than 100,000 steps per
revolution, it is possible to achieve wavelength resolution of 0.015 nm.

Tuning speed. This parameter is defined as the time it takes to change the
wavelength output of the ECL by a certain amount (typically 1 nm). Typical
numbers range from 1 s (for slow lasers) to 250ms (for fast lasers).

Side-mode suppression ratio. The ratio (in dB) between the power of the
fundamental mode and the power of the highest spurious mode. Using side-
mode filters, it is possible to obtain more than 50-dB suppression.

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 Lightwave Signal Sources

22.10 Chapter Twenty-Two

Linewidth. This parameter defines the width of the laser spectrum and is one of
the major advantages of external cavity lasers. By extending the laser cavity
length, lower linewidth values are possible. For a cavity 10 cm long, the linewidth
is about 100 kHz.

Output power. This parameter depends on the output power of the semiconductor
laser diode and the losses of the other components used inside the cavity.
Typically, external cavity lasers are capable of producing more than 100 µW of
output power.

Power stability. This parameter is defined over a certain time period (typically
1 h). It is a very important parameter since it is always desirable to generate a
stable output for long tests. Typical numbers range from ±0.05 to ±0.1 dB.

Power flatness vs. wavelength. This is one of the most important parameters of
a laser since most component testing requires constant output power. A good
ECL will have better than ±0.2 dB flatness over the tuning wavelength range.

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