Optically preamplified receiver at 10, 20, and 40 Gb/s using a 1550-nm vertical-cavity SOA

In this study, we demonstrate optical preamplification at 1550 nm using a vertical-cavity semiconductor optical amplifier (VCSOA). At 10 Gb/s, a receiver sensitivity of -28.5 dBm was achieved for 13 dB of fiber-to-fiber gain. This corresponds to an improvement in the receiver sensitivity of 9.7 dB. We also evaluated the performance at 20 and 40 Gb/s. A 4.7-dB power penalty was measured at 20 Gb/s with 6-dB fiber-to-fiber gain. Theoretical simulations show that the pattern dependence can be mitigated using a VCSOA with lower mirror reflectivity.