Semiconductor laser optical amplifiers for multichannel coherent optical transmission

The application of semiconductor laser optical amplifiers in multichannel coherent optical transmission systems is investigated. The amplifiers considered ( lambda =1.3 mu m) exhibit a gain of 24 dB at a grain ripple <2 dB and a 3-dB bandwidth of about 4000 GHz. The characteristics of these amplifiers and transmission experiments with these amplifiers are described. The investigations concern noise accumulation in an amplifier chain, generation of echoes due to backward gain in cascaded amplifiers, crosstalk in multichannel transmission, and the effect of gain saturation due to spontaneous emission. A good fit is shown between the advantages of multichannel coherent optical transmission systems and the properties of semiconductor laser optical amplifiers, which are very promising for future long-haul optical transmission systems.