Abstract
Integration of a booster semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) is an
efficient way of overcoming losses in InP based Mach–Zehnder
modulators. We analyze the impact of locating the SOA before and after the
MZM, respectively, in terms of output power and signal integrity at 10 Gb/s,
both experimentally and theoretically. For a device with 10 dB MZM loss it
is found that, for a fixed power consumption, locating the SOA after the MZM
provides 7–9 dB higher output power. This advantage is reduced for
lower MZM losses but remains significant. With the SOA after the MZM, the
gain is restricted by dynamic saturation effects (waveform distortion),
which is not the case if the SOA is at the input of the MZM. The waveform
distortion is accompanied by a spectral red-shift, which degrades the
transmission performance. Simulations show that for MZM losses below ${\sim} {\hbox {4}}$ dB, locating the SOA before the MZM can provide a higher power
with no waveform distortion and negative chirp, at the cost of a higher SOA
gain. For higher MZM losses it is unfeasible to locate the SOA before the
MZM, due to a prohibitively large power consumption.
© 2010 IEEE
PDF Article
More Like This
Cited By
You do not have subscription access to this journal. Cited by links are available to subscribers only. You may subscribe either as an Optica member, or as an authorized user of your institution.
Contact your librarian or system administrator
or
Login to access Optica Member Subscription