• Journal of the Optical Society of Korea
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.303-308
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• 2008

Directly modulated fiber-optic links generally suffer higher link loss and larger signal distortion than externally modulated links. These result from the electron-photon conversion loss and laser modulation dynamics. As a method to overcome the drawbacks, we have experimentally demonstrated the RF performance of directly modulated, ultra-strong injection-locked gain-lever distributed Bragg reflector (DBR) lasers. The free-running DBR lasers exhibit an improved amplitude modulation efficiency of 12.4 dB under gain-lever modulation at the expense of linearity. By combining gain-lever modulation with ultra-strong optical injection locking, we can gain the benefits of both improved modulation efficiency from the gain-lever effect, plus improved linearity from injection locking. Using an injection ratio of R=11 dB, a 23.4-dB improvement in amplitude response and an 18-dB improvement in spurious-free dynamic range have been achieved.