High-gain mode-adapted semiconductor optical amplifier with 12.4-dBm saturation output power at 1550 nm

Semiconductor optical amplifiers: performance and applications in optical packet switching [Invited]

“…In some designs the active waveguide taper is augmented by an underlying passive waveguide to expand the mode further [5,9,10]. For dilute mode designs [11,12], the waveguide is invariant along the length of the SOA and typically consists of a wide ( ~ 3 μm), thin ( ~ 0.05 μm) active layer. Coupling to lensed optical fiber can be achieved with losses of less than 1 dB per facet by careful matching of the optical mode in the fiber and the device [ Figs The black circle is a far field angle of 20 deg, and the interface between green and yellow is the 3-dB point relative to peak intensity.…”

“…Using wide, dilute waveguides [6,11,12], where the SOA has a low confinement factor and therefore a low photon density, has resulted in saturated output powers of around+17 dBm; with quantum dot active regions the power can be increased to +23 dBm [13]. The main drawbacks of this approach are the increased length and drive current requirements, e.g., for the above SOA a current drive of 2.5 A with a device length of 6.15 mm was required.…”

“…Generally the preferred means for reducing the polarization dependence requires the introduction of a tensile strain in a bulk active region [5][6][7]11]. The TE waveguide mode has a higher confinement factor than the TM mode, but tensile strain makes the TM material gain higher than that of TE.…”

Broad-band semiconductor optical amplifiers

“…The primary CWDM components developed to meet the ITU-T G.694.2 standard were designed for eight wavelengths between 1470 to 1610 nm including S, C and L bands. The semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs) have great potential as an in-line optical amplifier for CWDM systems due to their advantages of simple structure and easy application integration [1,2]. The SOAs characteristics of wide bandwidth, high-saturation output power are needed for CWDM application for the sake of covering more channels and reducing the signal crosstalk caused by the short carrier lifetime of SOAs.…”

Photonic Integrated Semiconductor Optical Amplifier Switch Circuits

“…The latter are tailored using epitaxially defined strain. A broad range of reports have demonstrated polarisation independent operation for both bulk (Emery et al, 1997;Dreyer et al, 2002;Morito et al, 2000;Kakitsuka et al, 2000;Morito et al, 2003;Morito et al, 2005) and quantum wells SOAs (Godefroy et al, 1995;Kelly et al, 1997;Ougazzadeu, 1995;Tiemeijer et al, 1996).…”