Abstract
A tunable second-order birefringent interferometric filter for minimizing signal degradation due to chirping in modulated lasers is proposed and demonstrated. Compared with commonly used filters with standard Gaussian and super-Gaussian filter profiles, a high-order loop mirror filter of similar bandwidth has a much sharper filtering slope. This provides more effective, specific filtering of desired components of a signal’s spectrum, minimizing signal power loss experienced during filtering. The steep filtering slope also provides significant improvement in transmission performance even with a change in data rate. Thus, the same filter can be reused for different bit rates. Furthermore, the tuning capability of the loop mirror filter enables good transmission performance when a variation in signal wavelength is present. Moreover, the unique, periodic filter profile potentially enables chirp management for multiple channels at different wavelengths. We experimentally verify the chirp management performance of the second-order birefringent loop mirror filter. Improvements to the transmission performance of both directly modulated lasers and electro-absorption modulated lasers at different data rates are achieved.
© 2015 Optical Society of America
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