Abstract

Excellent sensitivities have been reported for preamplifier receivers with erbium doped fiber amplifiers (EDFAs) at both 2.5 Gbit/s [1] and 10 Gbit/s [2]. The semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) is, however, an interesting alternative because of the possibility for integration with other optoelectronic components. Here, record sensitivities of −40.1 (2.5 Gbit/s) and −32.4 dBm (10 Gbit/s) are reported for preamplifiers based on polarisation insensitive SO As with 28 dB fiber-to-fiber gain. The sensitivities are 3–4 dB better than any previously reported results for SOA-preamplifiers [3-4], thus showing the potential for a compact high performance receiver. To investigate the multi channel capabilities of the SOA based preamplifier receiver, cross-talk penalties are measured at both 2.5 and 10 Gbit/s.

© 1994 Optical Society of America