Abstract

Recently, a method of pulse generation has been demonstrated in which a sinusoidally driven electroabsorption modulator optically gates the output of a cw laser, producing transform-limited pulses.¹ With this technique, integrated laser/modulators initially developed as non-return-to-zero (NRZ) data transmitters can serve as compact pulse sources with tunable repetition rate, wavelength, and pulse width, well suited to soliton and optical time-division-multiplexing (OTDM) applications. However, an additional modulator is required to encode data onto the pulse stream, adding cost and insertion loss to the transmitter. Wakita et al.² have added the function of data encoding to a faser/modulator pulse source by integrating a second modulator, thereby increasing the complexity of the chip. Raybon et al. have performed integrated data encoding by directly modulating the laser with NRZ data; however, a small amount of chirp is added by this technique.

© 1995 Optical Society of America