Abstract

The statistical properties of the turn-on delay time, pulse width, maximum light intensity and output power are analyzed by solving numerically the stochastic rate equations for the number of photons 1 and carriers number N. We study the influence of the value of the bias current for different frequencies of modulation, in the 1-10 GHz regime. We consider periodic and random signal modulation. Under fast periodic modulation, statistical properties are almost independent of the bias current, contrary to what happens in a slow modulated regime (in the order of MHz) or in repetitive gain switching. Under random signal modulation, appropriate for intensity modulation-direct detection optical communications, statistical properties are reported to be very sensitive to the value of the bias current: for bias above threshold the turn-on delay time and output power probability distributions become multimodal when entering the GHz regime. In this regime the response of the laser to an electrical pulse depends on previous transmitted bits.

© 1991 Optical Society of America