Experimental demonstration of a clock recovery scheme utilizing nonlinear relaxation oscillation in directly modulated lasers

Abstract An experimental demonstration was presented for a clock recovery scheme suitable for low‐cost short‐haul optical communications. This scheme utilizes the nonlinear relaxation oscillation in a directly modulated laser, which creates clock information in modulated nonreturn‐to‐zero optical signals. At the receiver, an injection locked oscillator is employed to extract and restore the clock. Eye diagrams of both received data signal and recovered clock demonstrate the capability of recovering clock from the data signal with an almost closed eye at ∼9 Gbps. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 51: 1654–1657, 2009; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/mop.24436