5 Gbit/s direct optical DPSK modulation of a 1530-nm DFB laser

5 Gb/s direct optical differential-phase-shift-keying (DPSK) modulation of a 1530-nm distributed feedback (DFB) laser is demonstrated using injection current modulation with a bipolar signal format. Delay demodulation is performed using an interferometer with a delay time T equal to the duration of one bit. The input and differentially encoded nonreturn to zero (NRZ) signals are shown. The bipolar modulation current signal is basically the time derivative of the NRZ signal. There was no degradation of the optical DPSK signal due to thermal frequency modulation of the laser. The direct DPSK modulation technique avoids the insertion loss and systems complexity of external DPSK modulators.>