Rapidly Tuned Random Access Laser Source

Semiconductor-based widely tunable lasers are attractive in that they are capable of wavelength switching on short timescales (lt;10ns); however, in order to switch at those speeds and remain stable, sophisticated control electronics and strategies are required.nbsp; The traditional approach to achieving switching speeds on the order of 100ns is to use an FPGA that interfaces to multiple digital to analog converters via a high-speed interface, resulting in a relatively large footprint and high power consumption (10s of watts not including the laser itself).nbsp; In our proposed approach, we suggest using our proprietary semiconductor devices that provide on-chip thermal compensation to remove the sensitivities to changing injection current, in conjunction with high-speed, low power consumption direct digital synthesis waveform generation integrated circuits.nbsp; This will result in a small footprint (approximately 2.7rdquo; x 3.4rdquo; x 0.54rdquo;) module that consumes less than 10W total (including laser and thermoelectric cooler).nbsp; This solution will enable volume and power constrained applications to adopt the capabilities that widely tunable laser source modules have to offer.nbsp; These applications include lidar (employing wavelength sensitive beam steering elements and/or FMCW), atmospheric gas sensing (methane, etc.), and fiber sensing.