ABSTRACT
Increasing demand from telephone, entertainment channels and computer links has resulted in the widespread implementation of optical fibre in terrestrial trunk links and in submarine systems. The compactness, low cost, efficiency, reliability and direct modulation capability of diode lasers has made them very robust for these applications. Many of these applications rely on the ability of laser diodes to generate short optical pulses at high repetition rates and methods of achieving this have therefore become important. The unique ability of the diode laser to generate light on direct injection of electrical carriers has led to a wide range of techniques for picosecond optical pulse generation, each typically leading to the development of different laser structures for optimised pulse generation. Spectral filtering also has been used to cause near transform limited pulse generation through the use of semiconductor amplifiers, diffraction gratings and pulse compression in optical fibre.
