All-optical clock recovery using erbium-doped fiber laser incorporating an electro-absorption modulator and a linear optical amplifier

We demonstrated a 10-GHz all-optical clock recovery system using an erbium-doped fiber laser that incorporates an electroabsorption modulator and a linear optical amplifier. Stable pulses with peak power of 200 mW and pulsewidth of 6 ps are obtained. The output power and the pulsewidth of the recovered clock pulses are independent of the input data pattern. Stable optical clock can still be observed when the input data rate varies by more than 60% of the fundamental frequency without any optical tunable delay line inside the laser cavity. The scheme is essentially wavelength transparent for the whole C-band which recovers clock pulses from input data wavelength between 1525 and 1565 nm