Optical Demultiplexing at 6 Gbit/s Using a Semiconductor Laser Amplifier as an Optical Gate.

A semiconductor laser amplifier (SLA) has been employed successfully for optical demultiplexing in two-channel optical time division multiplexed system experiments at 6 Gb/s and 2 Gb/s. Demultiplexing of 6-Gb/s (2-Gb/s) signals was demonstrated with a power penalty of 1.6 dB (3.0 dB) at bit error rates of 10 sup (-9). We also show that a reduction of the generated amplified spontaneous emission can be obtained by optical gating/demultiplexing for systems incorporating in-line amplifiers. We demonstrate a 0.5 dB improvement in sensitivity as a result of using a SLA for demultiplexing from 2.0 Gb/s to 1.0 Gb/s in a system with one in-line Er sup (3+) -doped fiber amplifier.