Ultra-short pulse generation for soliton transmission using electroabsorption modulators

A simple and stable technique of optical short pulse generation for soliton transmission based on external modulation is reviewe.By using nonlinearity of absorption characteristics of an electroabsorption modulator, ultra-short optical pulse trains having a shape close to sech² shape can be generated just with sinusoidal modulation, without ultra-short driving pulses and ultra-broad bandwidth of the modulator. The pulse width and the repetition rate can be varied by changing the electrical driving conditions. Quasi-transform-limited optical pulseswith time-bandwidth product of 0.32 were successfully generated by the sinusoidally driven InGaAsP electroabsorption modulator with up to 20 GHz repetition rate. An application of a λ/4-shifted DFB laser-electroabsorption modulator integrated light source to a single-chip soliton source is also described. The high quality of the modulator-generator pulses has been proven by long-distance soliton transmission over 6400 km at 2.5 Gb/s using a recirculating fiber loop.