Detailed investigation on reliability of wavelength-monitor-integrated fixed and tunable DFB laser diode modules

A highly reliable integration of a wavelength monitor (WM) in an industry standard 14-pin butterfly package has been successfully achieved by using soldering and YAG welding techniques. Mechanical integrity and endurance tests for fixed and tunable distributed-feedback (DFB) laser diode modules (LDMs) were performed according to an extended Telcordia GR-468-CORE in order to appreciate the fixtures of the WM part composed of a prism, a Fabry-Pe´rot etalon, power, and WM photodiodes. Wavelength and a fiber output power were evaluated as a function of duration time for each test. Incident light angles change against an etalon and an optical coupling deviates due to the separation between a laser diode part and a WM part for tunable DFB LDMs. The two occurrences have a profound influence on wavelength drifts. It was found that the wavelength drifts were less than ±5 pm under mechanical and thermal stresses for both types of DFB LDMs. It was also confirmed that the coated and mounted etalon itself was also highly reliable under thermal stresses. These results show that the WM-integrated fixed and tunable DFB LDMs were fully applicable to next-generation dense-wavelength-division-multiplexing (DWDM) systems of 50- and 25-GHz channel spacing.