A new scheme based on the electrical-filtered optical heterodyne technique is proposed for measuring the tuning speed of tunable distributed Bragg reflector (DBR) lasers. In this scheme, a 10 GHz high-pass electrical filter is used and the wavelength switching time of a tunable DBR laser for different tuning frequencies corresponding exactly to different delay lines is measured. The switching time is measured to be nearly 300 ns and can be improved by reducing the equivalent resistance-capacitance (RC) time constant of the device. The distribution of the beat signal of the DBR laser in the time domain is also obtained, and is a good match with the waveforms measured using an optical filter.
A novel all-optical method for ultra-wideband (UWB) monocycle pulses generation based on cross polarization modulation (CPM) effect in highly nonlinear photonic crystal fiber is proposed and demonstrated. Due to the CPM effect between the probe light and the pump pulse, a pair of polarity-reversed Gaussian pulses is produced. After proper differential delay, an UWB monocycle pulse with 84-ps width and the fractional bandwidth of 153% is generated after photodetection.