Vous êtes sur la page 1sur 2

Technique to compensate waveform Conversely, when the injection current of an SOA is lower than the

distortion in a gain-saturated value for transparency, the SOA functions as a saturable absorber
(hereafter called a semiconductor waveguide saturable absorber, or
semiconductor optical amplifier using a SWSA), which has low transmittance for low power input and high
semiconductor saturable absorber transmittance for high power input because of carrier excitation by the
input light. The carrier transition occurs with a duration nearly equal to
K. Inoue the carrier lifetime, and the transmittance of a semiconductor saturable
absorber does not instantly respond to changes in the input power. For
A technique to compensate waveform distortion induced in a gain- an intense rectangular input pulse, for example, the output from an
saturated semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) is proposed and SWSA behaves as shown in Fig. 1b. The leading part suffers large
demonstrated. A saturable absorber, which is actually an SOA biased
below the transparency current, is placed after an SOA. The loss
absorption and the later part approaches a loss-saturated condition.
dynamics of the absorber compensate the SOA gain dynamics and a
less distorted signal can be output. The dynamic behaviours of a gain-saturated SOA and an SWSA are
opposite, as shown in Fig. 1a and b. Thus, when an SWSA is placed
Introduction: Semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs) have been after an SOA, waveform distortion induced in the SOA can be
studied for lightwave communications. While they have advantages, compensated in the SWSA, and a less distorted signal is output from
such as compactness and the ability to be integrated with other opti-cal the combination of SOA and SWSA, as shown in Fig. 1c. Note that Fig.
devices, a disadvantage is waveform distortion due to gain satu-ration. 1c is not a simple multiplication of Fig. 1a and b, since the SWSA
When an intense optical signal is input into an SOA at a bit rate response is basically nonlinear and a simple multiplication idea based
comparable to (or higher than) the gain response time, wave-form on linear concepts cannot be applied to this situation.
distortion is incurred in the output signal [1 4].
This Letter proposes and demonstrates a technique to compensate
waveform distortion in a gain-saturated SOA. A second SOA biased
below the tranparency current is placed after an SOA with high gain.
Under this bias condition, the second SOA functions as a saturable
Fig. 2 Experimental setup
absorber, which has a dynamic response complementary to that in a
gain-saturated SOA and can compensate the waveform distortion
induced in the first SOA. Experiment: An experiment was carried out to confirm the above
mechanism, and its configuration is shown in Fig. 2. Two polarisa-tion-
sensitive SOA modules (1.5m band) were prepared and directly
connected with polarisation-maintaining fibres. The first-stage SOA
was biased at 100mA, giving an unsaturated module gain of 14dB. The
second-stage SOA had a transparency current (at which the chip gain is
0dB) of 14mA. This SOA was biased at 10.3mA and functioned as an
SWSA. The unsaturated chip loss of the SWSA was 6dB.

Fig. 3 Waveforms for random signal at SOA and SOA-SWSA outputs


a SOA output
Fig. 1 Signal waveform for rectangular pulse input b SOA-SWSA output
a SOA
b SWSA
c SOA+SWSA
2.5Gbit/s (2311 PRBS) signal light was input to the SOA-SWSA.
The peak power at the module input was 1dBm, which caused 3.2dB
Mechanism: A gain-saturated SOA distorts a signal waveform as gain compression under the CW condition. The waveform at the SOA
shown, for example, in Fig. 1a (which was obtained during our output is shown in Fig. 3a. The signal waveform was dis-torted due to
experiment, as will be described later). When an intense rectangular the gain dynamics of the SOA. The waveform at the SOA-SWSA
pulse is input into an SOA, the leading part is amplified with an output is shown in Fig. 3b. Owing to the loss dynamics of the SWSA,
unsaturated gain, and then the output power in the later part decreases the waveform distortion at the SOA output was com-pensated, as shown
as the amplifier approaches saturation. The relaxation time is in the Figure.
determined by the carrier lifetime and the stimulated emis-sion rate. The bit error rate (BER) was measured for these signals. The deci-
sion threshold in the receiver was fixed in our measurements. Fig. 4

ELECTRONICS LETTERS 19th February 1998 Vol. 34 No. 4


shows the result, where circles, triangles, and crosses denote the BERs (SWSA) which is actually an SOA biased below the transparency
for the signals at the SOA input, SOA output, and SOA-SWSA output, current, is placed after an SOA. Owing to the loss dynamics of the
respectively. While the BER was degraded at the SOA output, there SWSA, waveform distortion resulting from the SOA gain dynamics can
was little degradation at the SOA-SWSA output. Thus, our technique be compensated. The proposed technique was confirmed by BER
was confirmed by the BER measurements. measurement.
Our configuration can be realised in one amplifier chip, provided that
a multielectrode SOA is used. Thus, a compact SOA-SWSA that
outputs a less distorted signal will be obtained.

IEE 1998 10 November 1997


Electronics Letters Online No: 19980297
K. Inoue (NTT Laboratories, 1-1 Hikari-no-oka, Yokosuka, Kanagawa, 239
Japan)

References

1 ELREFAIE, A.,and LIN, C.: Performance degradations of multigigabit-per-


second NRZ/RZ lightwave systems due to gain saturation in travelling-
wave semiconductor optical amplifiers, IEEE Photonics. Technol. Lett.,
1989, 1, pp. 300302
2 WIESENFELD, J.M., GNAUCK, A.H., RAYBON, G., and KOREN, U.: High-speed
multiple-quantum-well optical power amplifier, IEEE Photonics.
Fig. 4 Bit error rate Technol. Lett., 1992, 4, pp. 708711
SOA input 3 SALEH, A.A.M., and HABBAB, I.M.I.: Effects of semiconductor-optical-

n SOA output amplifier nonlinearity on the performance of high-speed intensity-


SOA-SWSA modulation lightwave systems, IEEE Trans. Commun., 1990, 38, pp.
839846
4 LE LIGNE, MM., SOREL, Y., and KERDILES, J.F.: Theoretical and experimental
Summary: A novel technique to compensate waveform distortion study of a saturated near travelling wave amplifier working at 1Gbit/s
induced in a gain-saturated semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) was and 4.8Gbit/s, J. Opt. Commun., 1990, 11, pp. 104106
described. A semiconductor waveguide saturable absorber

ELECTRONICS LETTERS 19th February 1998 Vol. 34 No. 4

Vous aimerez peut-être aussi