Direct modulation bandwidth enhancement of uncooled DFB laser operating over a wide temperature range based on groove-in-trench waveguide structure

Abstract

Uncooled direct modulation DFB laser offers high speed transmission rate over a wide temperature range with high reliability and low cost, making it a cost-effective light source choice for 5G fronthaul and data center applications. However, a significant 3dB bandwidth decrease can be observed in high temperature for conventional DFB lasers. We present an uncooled DFB laser operating up to 85°C with extended direct modulation bandwidth and high reliability based on a novel groove-in-trench ridge waveguide structure, where two narrow grooves penetrating the active layer are etched symmetrically in the two conventional trenches by deep wet etching, respectively. By optimizing the distance between the groove and the mesa stripe, we obtain a 3dB bandwidth of 15.3 GHz at 85°C, which is a 3.7 GHz improvement compared with the conventional ridge waveguide DFB laser. Transmissions of 25 Gb/s NRZ signal at 25°C and 85°C with clear eye openings have been demonstrated. It also achieves 25 Gb/s transmission over 10 km optical fiber with a low power penalty of 0.5 dB for a bit error rate of 10−12 at 85°C. In addition, the result of 2000-hour aging test shows that the proposed groove-in-trench structure DFB lasers have the same excellent reliability as the conventional ones.