Potential low cost/high volume Fabry Perot laser for analogue applications

An area of optoelectronics receiving much attention is the development of components suitable for analogue application. Two notable areas dominate: (i) cable TV, and (ii) microwave analogue links at frequencies up to 18 GHz for a whole range of applications. For many requirements, such as cable TV `backbone´ link replacement employing AM (VSB) schemes, the extreme performance demands from the laser source may well prove prohibitive for volume implementation: laser relative intensity noise (RIN) figures as low as -160 dB/Hz (-150 min) and harmonic distortion better than 55 dB are necessary if an overall system signal/noise budget of 55 dB is to be achieved for greater than 20 channels. This paper discusses the characteristics of a high speed Fabry Perot laser with a bandwidth in excess of 6 GHz and good RIN and linearity performance. The device is based on BT&D´s fully packaged MOVPE grown buried heterostructure (BHET) FP laser and shares all the properties of this device: long operating life, good high temperature performance, stable hermetic package etc., but is modified for high speed