High-sensitivity high-speed semiconductor optically preamplified 980 NM receiver for satellite-to-satellite communication

This dissertation investigates using a semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) to implement a high-sensitivity, high-speed optical receiver operating at 980 nm for free space satellite-to-satellite communication. The optical amplifier boosts the incoming optical signal enabling use of high-speed photodiode detector rather than a more sensitive but lower bandwidth avalanche photodiode (APD).;We fabricated a high-gain, low noise SOA operating in the 980 nm wavelength regime. The noise figure of this amplifier (5.1 dB) was the lowest ever obtained for a non-buried-heterostructure SOA. Signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) measurements demonstrated for the first time that the conventional optical power noise figure measurement method can overestimate the noise figure by as much as 2 dB when amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) gain saturates the SOA.;A high-sensitivity optical receiver was implemented using a high-gain ;The optical preamplifier increased the S/N ratio sensitivity of the PIN/FET receiver by 18 dB and achieved ;A 25 GHz optically preamplified receiver was also implemented that achieved equivalent sensitivity to that of the 300 MHz receiver. Demonstrating for the first time that the sensitivity of an optically preamplified receiver can be made independent of the photodetector bandwidth with extrapolated operation up to 120 GHz.