Lecture 4

Optical Transmitters
Carlos Pupiales - 2015

Scope
Kinds of light radiation
Lasers
LED
Applications

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Light Sources
Basically we use two kinds of light source Laser and
LED.
Both differentiate to each other because of the beam
directivity, cost, manufacture, easy coupling, power,
efficiency, size, and direct modulation.

The choice of one source depends on the requirements

a network has such as bit rate, distance, reliability,
availability, and cost constrain.

Carlos Pupiales - 2015

Stimulated Emission
Broadly speaking, stimulated emission is put all photons in
one unique direction using a controlled method.

An atom in a low energy level is stimulated by a photon in

order it can change to a higher energy level (Stimulated
Adsorption).
When the atom falls down, it will release a similar photon,
but if the photon in the higher layer is stimulated again, it will
release two photons (emission)
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Stimulated Emission (2)

If the emission is more than absorption, we will be able to
create more and more photons (amplification).

In order we can amplify the signal, more atoms must be

present in E2 layer than E1, this is called Population
Inversion. If not, the signal will be attenuated.
Population inversion is achieved by supplying additional
energy (electrical or optical) to pump electrons to higher
energy level.
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Spontaneous Emission
Contrary to stimulated emission, spontaneous emission
releases photons in random directions, polarization, and
phase.
It appears when an atom is stimulated by an external power
and the electron goes up to higher energy layer. However, the
electron after a time spontaneously falls down and randomly
releases one photon.
Spontaneous emission is not desirable in optical systems
because its seems like noise.

Carlos Pupiales - 2015

Lasers
Lasers stands for Light Amplification by Stimulated
Emission of Radiation.
This device can be defined as an optical amplifier enclosed
within a reflactive cavity that causes it oscillate via positive
feedback. Fabry Perot Cavity
The light is emitted when an electron in a semiconductor
falls down from a upper energy level to a lower one
releasing energy. This is called stimulated emission
because its necessary a high power to stimulate to the
electrons.
The emitted radiation has spatial and temporal coherence,
so the output radiation is highly monochromatic and light
beam is very directional.
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Lasers (2)
For laser oscillation occurs, the wavelength must be within
the BW of the gain medium that is used and the length of the
cavity must be an integral multiple of half the wavelength in
the cavity.
The wavelengths which satisfy the second condition are
named Longitudinal Modes (LM).
For optical communications the spectral width of a laser must
be as narrow as possible to minimize chromatic dispersion
and crosstalk.
Therefore, its necessary that laser oscillates in a SLM instead
of MLM.

Carlos Pupiales - 2015

Fabry Perot Laser

FP is a kind of laser which consists in two active regions
separate with a gain medium where the generation of light takes
place.
The gain medium consists of a resonator cavity made of two
partially reflective mirrors that establish a strong longitudinal
optical oscillator feedback mechanism, thereby creating a lightemitting function.
Mirrors provide positive feedback in order to more phones can
stimulated.
The cavity supports infinitive number of wavelengths if the
mirrors are able to reflect them; however, the gain medium will
provide gain to a small range of wavelengths.
As light radiation is a consequence of interaction between
resonator and active medium, so only resonate wavelengths will
be radiated.
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Fabry Perot Laser (2)

As FP provides long feedback, this results in many longitudinal
modes thus large spectrum wave.
FP is used for low speed applications and short distances.
The distance between the resonant wavelengths in a FB cavity
with resonant mirrors with a n refractive index is the free
spectral range (FSR).

Source: Optical Networks, R. Ramaswami

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Semiconductor Lasers
They are based on a semiconductor gain media where
the gain is achieved by stimulated emission.
Its made of a p-n junction where the injection of
electrons (electrical current) in the pn junction results
in a emission of photons.
High amount of electrons are injected into P and N
regions. With a high voltage applied into pn junction,
the effect of energy transmission occurs thus light is
emmited.

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Semiconductor Lasers (2)

They have high efficiency (30 40 %).
They are highly compact.
They require low power to excite the pn junction to get
mW to 10W in the output as light.
Easily modulated just modulating the input current.
Large wavelength (400nm 12 um).
The light in the output of the laser is easily coupled to
the fiber.
They are temperature dependent (unstable).
Lower peak power.
Chirping (variations of central frequency due to current
variations)
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Distributed-Feedback Lasers
Based on Fabry Perot Cavity.
Its a kind of laser which are designed to have light
feedback in order to amplify the power at the output of the
laser.
The feedback occurs from a spaced reflectors located in the
interior of the cavity.
Practically, its done by a periodic variation of the width of
the cavity (corrugation).
Reflected waves add in phase if period of corrugation in
integral multiple of the wavelength.
Varying the corrugation period, different operating
wavelength can be obtained.
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Distributed-Feedback Lasers (2)

DFB are expensive and complex to manufacture.
DFB are temperature dependent.
If the corrugation is done in the medium gain, the laser is
DFB.
If the corrugation is done between the gain medium the
laser is named Distributed Bragg Reflector. This laser
allows to control both regions independently.
DFB are useful for long distance applications because of
the spectral width.

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External Cavity Laser

It follows the principles of Fabry Perot laser, but
This laser is useful to suppress the oscillation at more than
one longitudinal mode.
The laser will oscillate only in those wavelengths which
resonant in both primary and external cavity.
By suitable design of two cavities, it can be ensured that
only one wavelength will satisfy this condition. Therefore,
the laser will be confined into a single-longitudinal mode.
The external cavity is made of a diffraction grating because
the wavelengths will be reflected by the grating material to
the gain cavity.
The external cavity uses wavelength-selective mirrors.
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External Cavity Laser (2)

It can be made relatively cheaper than DFB lasers because
of the use of grating material.
Its more temperature stable than DFB due to low
temperature coefficient of the fiber grating.
One great disadvantage is that they cannot be modulated
directly at high speeds due to its long cavity.
Its used mainly in test equipment.

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Vertical Cavity Surface-Emitting Laser

Its a semiconductor-based laser that emits a highly efficient
optical beam vertically from its top surface.
The gain region has a very short length, so very high mirror
refractivity are needed to oscillation can happen.
This shape of emitting light offers several advantages in contrast
to other types of lasers:
The circular beam that VCSEL emits can be easily coupled to fiber.
It has low power consumption and high transmission speed.

Low manufacturing cost.

Long term reliability.

Due to the light emits from the bottom, it can be integrated into two
dimensional array configuration
Lower temperature dependent.
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Vertical Cavity Surface-Emitting Laser (2)

Vertical emission gives easy alignment and packing.
Circular and low divergence output eliminates the need of
corrective optics.

The top and bottom mirrors are made of Distributed Bragg

Refractor which have a high reflective index.
The oxide layer constructs an optical window which
optimize the beam into a circular one.
The gain region is made of Quantum Well structure.

Source: Optics4Sale

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Vertical Cavity Surface-Emitting Laser (3)

Quantum Well structure:
Consist of two layers made of Al, Ga, As (top and bottom) and one layer
in the middle made of Ga and As.
The layer in the middle is so thin in order the electrons cannot leak to
top and bottom layers so that laser efficiency is increased.

VCSEL devices operating at 0.85 um are commercially available and

used for low cost, short distance multimode fiber interconnections.
VCSEL has problems with operation temperature, so cooling devices
are needed.

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Tunable Lasers
They are very useful for WDM applications due to its possible to
choose the wavelength we want to work.
They are useful in optical reconfigurable networks as well.
The process of change the wavelength can be made with:
Injecting current into a semiconductor laser changes the
refractive index of the material and thus the wavelength. This
effect works in the 1.55 um windows and changes the
between 10-15 nm.

Modifying the operational temperature will change the in

1nm each 10C. However, the laser lifetime will decrease.
Mecanical tuning provide a wide tunable range if the laser uses
an external cavity.
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Tunable Lasers (2)

Tunable VCSEL can me made adjusting the cavity length by
appliying voltaje to upper and lower mirrors.
External cavity can be tuned varying angle and distance
from grating to cavity.
The complexity of tune mechanisms make sometimes this
lasers hard to manufature.

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Lasers and more Lasers

There many kinds of lasers more such as:

Mode-Locked
Two- and Three-Section DBR Lasers
VGF Lasers
Sampled Grating and Super-Structure Grating DBR
Lasers
Grating-Coupled Sampled Reflector Laser

Read about them, it can be assessed.

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Laser Arrays
An array can be used to obtain a kind tunable laser as
well.
An array of DFB each laser with different wavelengths
can be stimulated by changing the temperature.
A disadvantage of this approach is the accuracy of each
wavelength sufficiently spaced to each other.
Another approach is to use a Fabry Perot array and an
external device to select the required wavelength.

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Light Emitting Diode LED

Its a forward biased pn-junction in which electrons-holes
recombination leads to the generation of optical radiation
through spontaneous emission.
The structure is similar to that of a laser diode except there
isnt cavity for feedback purposes.
The output power increases smoothly as a function of
current injected.
At high input powers, the output power saturates, so the
output power only will be of a few miliwatts.
As the spectral width in the output is quite broad (3080nm), the system will have large dispersion.

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Light Emitting Diode LED (2)

Because of spontaneous emission, the output beam of a
LED is not directional.
Beam angles may be from 30 vertical to the junction to
120 parallel to the junction.
This broad emission makes that coupling this light into
SMF will be very inefficient. This contrast to MMF where
the efficiency will be higher.
LEDs cannot be modulated directly, so its necessary an
external device to do it.
A LED slicing can be perform using filters in the output of
the LED in order to used this device in narrow spectral
width, low speed, and low budget applications.
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Applications
Basically we can summarize lasers and LED as follow:
Lasers are used for long-distance applications where high data rate
is needed.
Due to the requirements for core networks, laser will be always
present with SMF in this networks.
Even though we need high data rates in access networks, these
speeds are not comparable with core, so MMF and LEDs can be
used here.
Due to the efficiency and manufacturing complexity laser has, they
will be more expensive and sensible. Therefore, only specialized
technicians should operate this sources.
Laser also can be used for short-distance purposes, but it will be
expensive. However, a balance between cost-benefit must be
perform in order to analyze pros and cons.
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Direct Modulation
The process on adding data to light stream is called
modulation.
The simplest and more used is On-Off Keying (OOK) where
light stream is turned on and off depending on data (1/0).
It is simple an inexpensive since no extra elements are
needed.
The ratio of the output power for 1 and 0 bits are called
extinction ratio.
Semiconductor lasers can be directly modulated.
The disadvantage is that resulting pulses are considerably
chirped where frequency varies with time, causing
broadening of transmitted spectrum.
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External Modulation
It consists of an external device which will turn on/off
according the light information.
The optical source injects a constant-amplitude light signal
into an external modulator. The electrical driving signal
changes the optical power that exits the external modulator.
This produces a time-varying optical signal reducing chirp
effect.

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You should now know

How energy is radiated from atoms.
The principles for amplification.
How a laser works.
The main features to choose one kind of laser
How a LED works.
What considerations take into account to choose between a LED
and Laser.
Why LEDS are used for short distance and low power
requirements.
Another reason why is not possible to increase the power easily.
A couple of applications of LED and Lasers.

Carlos Pupiales - 2015