The effect of external optical feedback on timing jitter in modulated laser diodes

Laser diodes with optical feedback are numerically modeled using single-mode rate equations. The effects of the optical feedback on the pulse turn-on delay and timing jitter are examined, for gain-switching, periodic and pseudorandom modulation formats. It is shown that there is a change in turn-on delay and a considerable increase in the timing jitter due to the changes in the output power distributions as optical feedback increases. The cause of the increased jitter is found to be the additional intensity noise introduced by the optical feedback.