Mode Selective Loss Penalties in VCSEL Optical Fiber Transmission Links

The system performance with respect to modal noise of both single mode and multi-transverse mode vertical cavity surface emitting lasers is reported. A bit error ratio floor is observed with only 1 dB of mode selective loss for the single mode device but no such floor is observed using the multimode device with up to 7.8 dB of mode selective loss. The modal noise penalty for the single mode device is attributed to its higher coherence and spectral fluctuations during modulation. © 1994 IEEE