Extraction of DFB laser rate equation parameters for system simulation purposes

Values for the parameters in a rate equation description of a distributed feedback (DFB) laser must be chosen appropriately in order to obtain agreement between calculated and measured results for system performance. A technique is described for readily extracting values of the rate equation parameters using measurements of the threshold current and the optical power, resonance frequency and damping factor for a bias current well above the threshold current. When used to estimate system performance, it is shown that different sets of physically reasonable parameter values which reproduce the measurements yield the same dependence of the receiver sensitivity on fiber length, Calculated and measured results for the receiver sensitivity and time resolved chirp exhibit good agreement when the extracted parameter values are used.