Transmission properties of 1.3-μm InGaAlAs MQW FP lasers in 10-gb/s uncooled operation

Limitations on transmission by an uncooled InGaAlAs Fabry-Perot (FP) laser in 10-Gb/s operation are experimentally and theoretically investigated. The InGaAlAs laser has both high relaxation-oscillation frequency and superior light-current characteristics over a wide temperature range, making it suitable for uncooled operation at 10 Gb/s. Over most of the temperature range used in transmission testing with standard-dispersion fiber, a small power penalty of 1 dB for a bit error rate (BER) of 10^-12 was obtained in transmission over 4-7 km at the measured temperature range, whereas an error floor was seen in transmission over greater distance, despite the negative chromatic dispersion between the fiber and laser light. Theoretical analysis of these results indicates that mode-partition noise (MPN) imposes the major limitation on transmission distance. Moreover, the minimum transmission distance was estimated as 2.1 km, even when the production tolerance of lasing characteristics and zero-dispersion range of installed fiber are taken into account.