Laser Devices for CATV Applications.

Lasers with low noise and distortion are making inroads into the market for Cable Television (CATV) trunk line transmission. We describe the design, testing and performance of 1.3microns Capped Mesa Buried Heterostructure Distributed Feedback (CMBH- DFB) lasers for this application. The observation of "sweet spots" at particular bias currents in second order distortion can be attributed to nonlinearities in the light-current (L-I) characteristic; we obtain quantitative agreement between distortion calculated from the L-I curve and the observed Composite Second Order (CSO). Relative Intensity Noise (RIN) of better than -152dB/Hz is also observed. This memo summarizes a talk to be given to the Laser and Electrooptic society (LEOS).