Reduction of nonlinear distortion from a semiconductor optical amplifier using an optical equalizer

Author

Bhardwaj, Ashish ; Doerr, Christopher R. ; Chandrasekhar, S. ; Stulz, Lawrence W.

Author_Institution

Bell Labs., Lucent Technol., Holmdel, NJ, USA

Volume

16

Issue

3

fYear

2004

fDate

3/1/2004 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

921

Lastpage

923

Abstract

We demonstrate significant improvement in the measured bit-error rates of 40-Gb/s signals distorted after passing through a saturated semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) by using a simple colorless general optical equalizer. The optical equalizer reduces the overshoots arising from the nonlinear gain dynamics of the SOA and improves the opening of the eye. We study the improvement in receiver sensitivity by using the equalizer while varying the optical power and wavelength at the input of the SOA.

Keywords

Mach-Zehnder interferometers; equalisers; error statistics; nonlinear distortion; optical receivers; semiconductor optical amplifiers; SOA; bit-error rates; nonlinear gain dynamics; optical equalizer; overshoots; receiver sensitivity; semiconductor optical amplifier; signal distortion; Distortion measurement; Equalizers; Nonlinear distortion; Nonlinear optics; Optical distortion; Optical receivers; Optical saturation; Optical sensors; Semiconductor optical amplifiers; Stimulated emission;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Photonics Technology Letters, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1041-1135

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/LPT.2004.823747

Filename

1269840