Studies on semiconductor optical amplifiers for line capacity expansion in photonic space-division switching system

The problems associated with introducing traveling wave amplifiers (TWAs) to photonic space-division (SD) switching systems are examined. Experiments were carried out to clarify the TWA noise effect and interference between cascaded TWAs, using about 10-dB gain TWA modules. Possibility of a 128-line photonic SD switching system, using current polarization-independent LiNbO/sub 3/ 8*8 switch matrices, has been shown through the experiments. The possible line capacity value of the photonic SD switching system with TWAs is examined theoretically. It is shown that the expected line capacity value for such a switching system exceeds 10/sup 3/.<
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