15-GHz modulation bandwidth, ultralow-chirp 1.55-μm directly modulated hybrid distributed Bragg reflector (HDBR) laser source

A hybrid source has been realized, integrating a fast Fabry-Perot laser and a fiber grating. The device has shown very good performances in the 1530-1570-nm range, obtaining 16 mA of threshold current at 20/spl deg/C, 1.6-mW fiber optical power and 48 dB of sidemode suppression ratio at 50 mA bias current. The cavity length was designed to achieve a good tradeoff between chirp reduction and increasing speed. The device has shown for the first time, to our knowledge, more than 15 GHz of small-signal modulation bandwidth, and 10-Gb/s modulation capability. Moreover, a penalty-free transmission experiment at 2.5 Gb/s over 100 km of standard fiber has confirmed the very low wavelength chirp of the device. These previous characteristics together with an extremely low temperature dependence (<0.02 nm//spl deg/C) make the hybrid distributed Bragg reflector (HDBR) particularly suitable for dense wavelength-division-multiplexing systems.