Simple setup for simultaneous optical clock recovery and ultra-short sampling pulse generation

Abstract

An optical sampling source based on simultaneous clock recovery and optical pulse generation with an electroabsorption modulator is demonstrated. Ultra-short (<670 fs) optical pulses are generated with 280 fs jitter with respect to a 10 Gbit/s data stream. The source is wavelength tunable and could be extended to handle up to 160 Gbit/s data.