Direct modulation of a multifrequency laser up to 16 x 622 Mb/s

We demonstrate direct modulation results on a 16-channel chirped multifrequency laser without a shared amplifier, There is no optical power penalty compared to the case of a single modulated channel when all 16 channels are modulated simultaneously at 310 Mb/s, and 2 dB power penalty when they all are modulated at 622 Mb/s due to electrical crosstalk. The entire wavelength comb can be shifted by 275 GHz by changing the device temperature from 13/spl deg/C to 33/spl deg/C, while the channel-to-channel power uniformity remains better than 0.2 dB and the optical channel spacing stays exactly 200 GHz.