Effective Linewidth of Semiconductor Lasers for Coherent Optical Data Links

We discuss the implications of using monolithically integrated semiconductor lasers in high capacity optical coherent links suitable for metro applications, where the integration capabilities of semiconductor lasers make them an attractive candidate to reduce transceiver cost. By investigating semiconductor laser frequency noise profiles we show that carrier induced frequency noise plays an important role in system performance. We point out that, when such lasers are employed, the commonly used laser linewidth fails to estimate system performance, and we propose an alternative figure of merit that we name “Effective Linewidth”. We derive this figure of merit analytically, explore it by numerical simulations and experimentally validate our results by transmitting a 28 Gbaud DP-16QAM over an optical link. Our investigations cover the use of semiconductor lasers both in the transmitter side and as a local oscillator at the receiver. The obtained results show that our proposed “effective linewidth” is easy to measure and accounts for frequency noise more accurately, and hence the penalties associated to phase noise in the received signal.