Patent ID: 6483615
Filing Date: 2002-11-19
Classification: H01S

Abstract:
A method for selecting individual optical source components for use in implementing a fiber optical communication system designed to have an operating bandwidth and to be implemented using a specified type of optical source, comprising the steps of:(a) testing a plurality of optical source components of the specified type with respect to a noise measure at a frequency outside of the operating bandwidth of the communication system to determine a noise measure level for each optical source component; and (b) rejecting one or more of the optical source components for non-use in implementing the communication system based on the corresponding noise measure levels; and (c) selecting one or more of the optical source components for use in implementing the communication system based on the corresponding noise measure levels, wherein: the optical source components are electro-absorption modulator isolated laser modules; the frequency corresponds to a relaxation oscillation frequency of each optical source component between about 6 GHz and about 15 GHz; the noise measure is a relative intensity noise (RIN) measure and the noise measure level of the optical source component is below âˆ’130 dB/Hz; during step (a), each optical source component is operated in an unmodulated mode using a transmission path having a length of approximately 0 km and no optical amplifiers; and step (a) further comprises the step of characterizing optical source components with respect to chirp to determine a chirp level for each optical source component and step (c) comprises the step of selecting the optical source components based on both their chirp levels and their noise measure levels, wherein only those optical source components having a chirp level below a specified chirp level threshold are characterized with respect to the noise measure, wherein the specified chirp level threshold is about 0.2 Angstroms peak-to-peak.