Time And Spectral Domain Simulations Of Semiconductor Optical Amplifiers

Semiconductor Optical Amplifier (SOA) is one of the principal functional devices in future all-optical networks.Compared with other optical amplifiers, SOAs have many advantages such as the continuous choice of wavelength(1.1~1.6μm), small volume, low power consumption, high speed,integrability in photonic integrated circuits, and low cost potential and so on. SOAs can be used as inline amplifiers and WDM transmission. Moreover, SOAs have many functional applications including optical switches, data format conversion, modulators, 3R regeneration and wavelength converters. Therefore, SOAs show great promise for use in evolving optical communication networks.Numerical simulation for SOAs is an important basis of research on device characteristics, device fabrication, and new application development. In this thesis, based on analyzing basic theory model of SOAs, time and spectrum domain simulation for SOAs are performed. The research results are as follows:(1) After analyzing material gain and spontaneous emission of semiconductor, input signal and spontaneous noise are treated in the same fashion using broadband traveling-wave rate equation theory. The influence of ASE in the whole gain band on time and spectral domain properties of SOAs is taken into account.(2) Broadband traveling-wave rate equations are numericalized using longitudinal evenly subsection SOA. Then, dynamic time-domain model of SOAs is simulated. We obtain time-domain dynamic properties of SOAs including carrier distribution, ASE output, evolvement of high rate signal and so on. The influences of designing and operating parameters on SOA device characteristics are also analyzed.(3) Spectral-domain simulation model of SOAs is established using extended transfer matrix formalism. Then, the spectral-domain properties of SOAs are simulated. Output spectrum of SOAs in different device and operating parameters are obtained.(4) The above model is valid at any bias current so it can also be used to analyze and simulate LD. In this thesis, LD is also investigated and some simple results are shown, providing a good foundation for future research.