We all are familiar with laser and its applications. Lasers have a very important role in the health care industry. Also lasers are used in the communication field also. The wavelength of the light from the laser depends on the material of laser. Can you adjust the wavelength of the laser? This is possible by using a tunable laser.
Tunable lasers as the name suggests are lasers whose wavelengths are often tuned or varied. They play a very important role in optical communication networks. Recent enhancements in tunable laser technologies are enabling highly flexible and effective utilization of the huge increases in optical network capability brought by large-scale application of dense wavelength division multiplexing.
Several tunable laser technologies have emerged, each having its own set of tradeoffs with reference to the requirements of specific optical networking applications. Tunable lasers are made mainly in four ways:
The external cavity laser
The vertical cavity laser
Distributed feedback laser (DFB)
Micro electro mechanical system (MEMS)
Tunable lasers facilitate network administrators to avoid wasting plenty of cost, by permitting them to efficiently manage the network with lesser number of spares. They also modify reliable functioning of the optical network. Changing traffic patterns, client necessities, and new revenue opportunities need larger flexibility than static OADMs will offer, complicating network operations and planning. Incorporating tunable lasers removes this constraint altogether by permitting any channel to be superimposed by the OADM at any time.