High saturation power (>16.5 dBm) and low noise figure (<6 dB) semiconductor optical amplifier for C-band operation

Photonic switching devices based on semiconductor nano-structures

“…QD semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs) were reported to exhibit ultralow noise figure [23] and negligible pattern effect [24], due to the absence of carrier heating effects in spatially separated QDs.…”

Photonic Integrated Semiconductor Optical Amplifier Switch Circuits

“…Noise may be managed through the minimisation of loss and the reduced requirement for high current amplifiers (Lord & Stallard, 1989). State of the art noise figures for fiber-coupled SOAs are of the order 6-8dB (Borghesani et al, 2003), depending on whether the structure is optimised for low-power input signals (preamplifiers) or power booster amplifiers (post-amplifiers). These values are higher than for fiber amplifiers, due to the losses in fiber to chip coupling and imperfect population inversion.…”

“…While bulk active regions offer the highest confinement, quantum wells (in reducing numbers) allow for an increase in distortion threshold with output saturation powers of order +15dBm and higher being reported (Borghesani et al, 2003;Morito et al, 2003). Quantum dot epitaxies allow even further reductions in optical overlap for the highest reported saturation powers (Akiyama et al, 2005).…”

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.…”