Effect of saturable absorption on the performance of a 40 GHz optical clock recovered from a monolithic semiconductor laser

The effect of a saturable absorber (SA) on the performance of 40 GHz optical clock signal recovered from a monolithic semiconductor laser was investigated. Optical clock recovery is the key requirement of all optical generators which are used for reducing the impairments in ultra long haul high capacity dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) transmissions. It was shown that the saturable absorption in the laser cavity increases the extinction ratio and suppresses timing jitter and increases sensitivity to the data mark ratio.