Reducing crosstalk and signal distortion in wavelength-division multiplexing by increasing carrier lifetimes in semiconductor optical amplifiers

A simple theory for the crosstalk in multichannel wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) communication systems caused by the cross gain saturation in semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) is developed. It is shown that increasing the carrier recombination lifetime while reducing the differential gain in the SOA greatly mitigates the crosstalk. An SOA using type-II quantum wells with reduced recombination probability is designed, and its characteristics are numerically modeled for a number of different WDM systems. It is shown that when used as a preamplifier or in local/metro networks with a small number of amplifiers, error-free transmission can be achieved with the type-II SOA.