Analysis of Noise Effects in Long Semiconductor Optical Amplifiers

Abstract

In this letter, we address one of the essential processes to consider in long Semiconductor Optical Amplifiers (SOAs) analysis, which is the noise. Particularly, we investigate the impact of noise effects on the SOA behavior by measuring the gain, the optical signal to noise ratio and the noise figure, referring to numerical simulations. Although its gain dynamics provide very attractive features of high speed optical signal processing, we show that the noise is strong in long SOAs and can limit the performance of the structure. In order to remedy this, we show that using high bias current at moderate input signal power is recommended.