A Continuously Tunable Erbium-Doped Fibre Laser Using Tunable Fibre Bragg Gratings and Optical Circulator

A continuously tunable erbium-doped fibre laser (TEDFL) based on tunable fibre Bragger grating (TFBG) and a three-port optical circulator (OC) is proposed and demonstrated. The OC acts as a 100%-reflective mirror. A strain-induced uniform fibre Bragger grating (FBG) which functions as a partial-reflecting mirror is implemented in the linear cavity. By applying axial strain onto the TFBG, a continuously tunable lasing output can be realized. The wavelength tuning range covers approximately 7.00nm in C band (from 1543.6161 to 1550.3307nm). The side mode suppression ratio (SMSR) is better than 50dB, and the 3dB bandwidth of the laser is less than 0.01nm. Moreover, an array waveguide grating (AWG) is inserted into the cavity for wavelength preselecting, and a 50km transmission experiment was performed using our TEDFL at a 10Gb/s modulation rate.