Abstract

Results from a computer model of the mode-locked fibre ring laser of Greer and Smith¹ have enabled us to identify the key pulse formation mechanism. This laser is intended to serve as the central component in a signal regenerator for a fibre-optic communication system. An incoming random bit stream, degraded by passage through a long upstream fibre, serves as the external modulation source that drives the actively mode-locked fibre ring laser, and later as the information source in a nonlinear fibre modulator that refashions the original pulse sequence. The real laser cavity contains many kilometres of optical fibre and inclusion of self-phase modulation (SPM) and group velocity dispersion (GVD) is therefore essential.

© 1994 IEEE