Mitigation of dispersion-induced effects using SOA in analog optical transmission

A novel technique to improve an analog optical transmission performance by reducing both the nonlinearity and chromatic dispersion induced carrier suppression has been proposed. The intrinsic nonlinear distortion component of Mach-Zehnder modulator (MZM) was reduced by gain saturation characteristics of semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA). The composite triple beat (CTB) of MZM was reduced as much as 9 dB at the quadratic bias point and the following enhancement of dynamic range by 4.5 dB was obtained. The RF carrier suppression for the transmission length and operating frequency was reduced by a negative chirp characteristic of semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) and the enhancement of CTB after transmission were also achieved as a result of the linearization using SOA.