Semiconductor optical amplifiers(SOAs) application are not as widespread as one would expect. The reason lies in the severe interchannel crosstalk experienced by the signals in a wavelength-division multiplexing(WDM) link using SOA. Theoretical study on channel crosstalk due to gain saturation in SOAs is presented. A significantly higher penalty is paid at more channels because of the gain saturation characteristic of SOAs. Crosstalk mitigation techniques in SOAs are studied. We have demonstrated theoretically and experimentally that a CW light propagating with signal can mitigate crosstalk in SOAs at channel rates of 40Gb/s. Reduction of crosstalk in SOA by amplifying dispersed WDM signals is confirmed experimentally. Based on the results of the experiment, a novel dispersion management scheme is proposed to prevent the interchannel crosstalk caused by cross-gain modulation.

Date Published: 11 November 2008
PDF: 8 pages
Proc. SPIE 7136, Optical Transmission, Switching, and Subsystems VI, 71362I (11 November 2008); doi: 10.1117/12.803688

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 7136:
Optical Transmission, Switching, and Subsystems VI
Ken-ichi Kitayama; Pierpaolo C. Ghiggino; Kim Roberts; Yikai Su, Editor(s)