Long-Term Bit Error Rate Transmission Using an Erbium Fiber Grating Laser Transmitter at 5 and 2.5 Gb/s

Abstract We report the successful use of a 1540-nm erbium fiber grating (EFG) laser as a stable transmitter source in long-term bit error rate (BER) transmission fiber experiments at 5 and 2.5 Gb/s. At 5 Gb/s, straight BER performance results in error-free operation for 3 days of the system through 86 km of non-dispersion-shifted fiber. Also, there is no degradation in the receiver sensitivity (-21 dBm at BER 10 -10 ) whether the system is operated with the EFG laser or a distributed feedback laser. At 2.5 Gb/s, stable transmission performance with BER below 10 -13 (-32.5 dBm) is demonstrated over 300 km of standard single-mode fiber in a chain of four equally spaced 980-nm-pumped erbium-doped fiber amplifiers. These results indicate that the EFG laser is a promising candidate for long-distance high-speed transmission applications.