Transmission Performance Improvement of Directly Modulated 1.5 µm VCSEL: Simulations and Experiments

In this work, the transmission performance of a directly modulated 1.5 µm Vertical Cavity Surface Emitting Laser (VCSEL) are investigated with respect to the shape of the driving electrical pulse. A model is developed for the device used and the transmission over standard Single Mode Fiber is simulated for NRZ and RZ formats, at 2.5 Gb/s and 10 Gb/s. Results are reported for propagation lengths between 10 Km and 30 Km. Simulations results are compared with experiments. We found that Q factor and propagation length can be improved if non Gaussian pulses are employed.