OPTICAL CLOCK DISTRIBUTION USING A MODE-LOCKED SEMICONDUCTOR-LASER DIODE SYSTEM

Mode locked operation of a semiconductor laser system was used as a virtually jitterless timing source in the distribution of a clock to 1024 ports via optical fibers. The total accumulated dynamic clock jitter between any two ports, which contains both correlated and uncorrelated sources, was measured to be less than 12 ps. These results represent to our knowledge the largest fanout with the minimum timing jitter for an optically distributed clocking network.