Performance improvements for optical links applying semiconductor optical amplifiers

The transmission properties of optical links carrying subcarrier channels are strongly affected by fiber dispersion, fiber nonlinearity and reflections. An approach is presented here to reduce the chromatic dispersion-induced distortions. This new method is based on the interplay of the fiber nonlinearity and the intensity dependent phase modulation in the semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA). Theoretical and experimental results are demonstrated for optical links with different length. The results show that the frequency notches caused by the dispersion-induced carrier suppression effect may be sharply alleviated and the transmitted digital signal performance can be improved.