Characteristics of a Designed 1550 nm AlGaInAs/InP MQW VCSEL

Abstract

The vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) is becoming a key device in high-speed optical local-area networks (LANs) and even wide-area networks (WANs). In this work, the design and characteristics of a 1550 nm Multi Quantum Well (MQW) VCSEL using AlGaInAs/InP Materials have been obtained through computation and simulation using MATLAB simulation Tool. The obtained characteristics have been analyzed for obtaining better performance. For achieving a superior performance, the concentrations of AlGaInAs QW material have been chosen using the results of another research works. The material gain of the Al0.09Ga0.38In0.53As/InP MQW VCSEL has been theoretically computed. Using the peak material gain obtained from this computation the performance characteristics of the designed VCSEL have been obtained. At 300K, the threshold current of the VCSEL has been obtained as 0.6075 mA. A maximum output power of 1.02 mW has been obtained for this designed VCSEL at 8.5 mA injection current. Corresponding to this the modulation bandwidth has been obtained as 14.2 GHz which indicates a high speed performance of the designed VCSEL for applications in optical fiber communication. Further by increasing the injection current up to 16.5 mA a maximum bandwidth is obtained as 19.5 GHz.