Towards 1 Tbit/s SOA-based 1310 nm transmission for local area network/data centre applications

Abstract

The growing data traffic in the local area networks is driving development of the cost-effective transmission systems that can carry it effectively. In this study, firstly, we investigate the influence of a semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) on the transmission quality in the 1310 nm wavelength-division-multiplexed system. We examine the differences in the channels gain and power penalty depending on the applied channel spacing. Moreover, we analyse the transmission-related power penalty suffered during the transmission over the link consisting of the standard single-mode fibre (SSMF) and a SOA. Furthermore, we propose the 1310 nm dense-wavelength-division multiplexed and polarisation multiplexed transmission system architecture which counteracts the key performance limitation that can be encountered in the 1310 nm window transmission systems. The demonstrated n × 2 × 40 Gbit/s transmission system is based exclusively on semiconductor components without any form of the chromatic dispersion compensation or error correction. Results of the conducted experiments show the excellent error-free 8 × 2 × 40 Gbit/s all-semiconductor transmission over 25 km of SSMF. The demonstrated transmission system can be utilised to realise ultra-high-speed connections like the next generation 400 Gbit/s and 1 Tbit/s Ethernet.