Dynamic range of widely tunable sampled-grating DBR lasers

The dynamic range of sampled-grating distributed Bragg reflector lasers is investigated. The system noise is limited by the photodiode shot noise, which is below −160 dBm/Hz at normal bias current. The spur-free dynamic range is between 100–112 dB · Hz2/3. Both the noise and linearity are uniform over the whole tuning range of 50 nm, and are relatively insensitive to mode detuning.