Tunable external cavity laser based on polymer waveguide platform for WDM access network

We developed a wide-range wavelength tunable external cavity lasers based on a polymer waveguide platform for use in wavelength-division-multiplexing (WDM) access networks as a low-cost light source. The lasing wavelength is tuned over 13 nm by thermally changing the reflection spectrum of the polymer waveguide Bragg grating with a heater. With the sidemode suppression ratio higher than 30 dB, it can support 16 WDM channels spaced by 100 GHz. The directly modulated 1.25-Gb/s data streams were successfully transmitted over the single-mode optical fiber link of 20 km.