Broadband optical chaos for stimulated Brillouin scattering suppression in power over fiber

Broadband chaos generated in an optically injected semiconductor laser is applied for power-over-fiber transmission. By varying the injection power, period-one oscillation, period-two oscillation, and chaotic oscillation are observed in the injected slave laser, indicating a period-doubling route to chaos. Compared to the free-running output of the laser, its chaotic output has a drastically increased signal bandwidth, which leads to a 19 dB increase of the stimulated Brillouin scattering threshold. Using a chaos of 5:2GHz bandwidth, a maximum optical power of 27dBm is obtained after 20km transmission over fiber, which is applicable to optically powering some advanced communication networks. The approach uses the inherent nonlinear laser dynamics, which requires no modulation electronics or microwave signal sources. © 2011 Optical Society of America. © 2011 Optical Society of America.