Lightwave Systems with Optical Amplifiers.
01 January 1989
Recent advances have brought semiconductor amplifiers to the stage where lightwave systems employing amplifiers in some aspects clearly out-perform traditional systems. For example, the longest non-regenerated fiber transmission experiments use optical amplifier repeaters, and at very high data-rates (4 GBit/s), receivers with optical pre-amplifiers are substantially more sensitive than their coherent and APD counterparts. In this paper, fiber optic communication systems employing semiconductor laser amplifiers are investigated theoretically and experimentally. The noise and bit-error-rate characteristics of lightwave systems with optical amplifiers are calculated and the dependence of system performance on amplifier characteristics such as optical bandwidth, noise figure, gain etc. is shown. Experimental results are presented on both a 4 GBit/s optical pre-amplifier as well as coherent and direct detection systems with four in-line amplifiers.