Optical phaselock receiver with multigigahertz signal bandwidth

Abstract
We have built a balanced pin FET receiver which employs two signal amplification paths for homodyne detection of multigigabit-per-second, pilot-carrier PSK optical signals. Using narrow-line 1.51µm semiconductor lasers, we have employed this receiver to phaselock a local oscillator to a 295 pW pilot carrier with 8° RMS phase error.