Power penalty due to optical back reflection in semiconductor optical amplifier repeater systems

The effect of optical back-reflection on the bit-error-rate performance of a semiconductor laser amplifier repeater system is evaluated at 565 Mb/s. It is found that the degradation of the back-reflection is mainly caused by multiple reflection in the amplifier and depends on the internal gain of the optical amplifier and the reflectivity of the reflection points. It is concluded that in optical amplifier repeater systems with large gain, an optical isolator should be used to reduce the back-reflection penalty.<
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