Nonlinearity and Its Compensation of Semiconductor Laser Diodes for Analog Intensity Modulation Systems

Experimental investigation was carried out on nonlinear video distortions of differential gain and differential phase in various optical transmitters using laser diode structures having a single transverse mode operation. It was observed that the measured nonlinearity of laser diodes was comparable to that of a typical LED. A simple linearizing technique for improving the nonlinearity, using an emphasis principle, is proposed and was experimentally examined, yielding promising results.