We will present the current state-of-the-art in widely tunable edge emitting lasers for WDM applications. Typical applications for a tunable laser will be discussed, and the different types of tunable lasers available today will be compared with respect to the requirements posed by these applications. We will focus on the DBR-type tunable lasers - DBR, SG-DBR and GCSR - which at present seem to be the only tunable lasers mature enough for real-life applications. Their main advantages are that they are all monolithic, with no moving parts, and can be switched from one frequency to the other very rapidly since the tuning is based on carrier injection and not on thermal or mechanical changes. We will briefly discuss the working principle of each of these devices, and present typical performance characteristics. From a manufacturing point of view, rapid characterization of the lasers is crucial; therefore an overview will be given of different characterization schemes that have recently been proposed. For the end user, reliability is the prime issue. We will show results of degradation studies on these lasers and outline how the control electronics that drive the laser can compensate for any frequency drift. Finally, we will also discuss the impact of the requirement for rapid frequency switching on the design of the control electronics.

Date Published: 8 November 2001
PDF: 9 pages
Proc. SPIE 4533, Semiconductor Lasers for Lightwave Communication Systems, (8 November 2001); doi: 10.1117/12.447762

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 4533:
Semiconductor Lasers for Lightwave Communication Systems
Carmen S. Menoni; Richard P. Mirin, Editor(s)