Application Research Of Semiconductor Optical Amplifier In Optical Fiber Communications

With semiconductor technology developing, the function of semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) is improved extremely. SOA is studied and applied extensively, and is playing a more and more important role in optical communication at present. We study mainly the property of pulse amplifier of SOA and the pulse compression shaping of being based on SOA and all optical wavelength conversion (AOWC) of being based on SOA.The optical pulse amplification is a key technology in optical communication. SOA is a important amplification element. We apply the Agrawal's theory model of SOA, and study the temporal characteristics of the output pulse for input picosecond optical pulses with different sharpness edges passing through a semiconductor optical amplifier, and find that the peak power and the pulse width of the output pulse depend on the input pulse peak power, the sharpness degree of the input pulse edge and the bias current of SOA. Agrawal's theory model of SOA can't simulate accurately the amplified signal pulse shape in SOA when the pulse width is as short as several picosecond. So we simulate accurately the peak power, full width half maximum, rising time and falling time of amplified pulse after considering the gain compression, gain asymmetry, gain shift, gain variable with situation and time.With ultrahigh velocity dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) and optical time division multiplexing (OTDM) developing, we demand more and more short signal pulse and more signal channels. But the development of DWDM can't be satisfied for finite wavelengths. However AOWC can make the wavelengths reused. A novel project is explored for signal pulse compression and shaping by utilizing the co-propagating second order super-Gauss control pulse and Gauss signal pulse in semiconductor optical amplifier. The results show that wavelength locates in gain zone of semiconductor optical amplifier, and have higher peak power and proper time delay between the two pulses for the second order super Gauss control pulse in semiconductor optical amplifier. A high quality amplified signal pulse can be achieved. The chirp can be reduced notability by using cascading SOA in cross gainmodulation based on SOA, and the distance and the peak power of conversion optical pulse can be increased notability, and we can let down the demand for wavelength based on XGM in SOA and enhance the flexibility of wavelength conversion. In wavelength conversion based on four-wave mixing (FWM) in SOA, balance efficiency can be obtained in larger range when increasing saturation power of the optical amplifier and decreasing the saturation power of spectral hole burning and carrier heating.