Abstract

Mode-locked fiber lasers have appeared in a number of forms¹ and such lasers may be made suitable for optical communications systems if they can be made compact, efficient, and stable. In particular, broadband mode-locked fiber lasers (>20 nm bandwidth) present technical challenges related to dispersion compensation, mode-locking mechanisms, etc. Recently, a new concept for wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) data transmission was reported² in which a short broadband optical pulse is generated with a mode-locked fiber laser, then modulated with a modulator array, resulting in a multichannel WDM transmission source with unique properties. Such a system requires a low-cost compact optical source with ~20 nm bandwidth at 1550 nm with about +10 dBm optical power, at pulse repetition rates from 50-155 MHz.

© 1996 Optical Society of America