Scaling Capacity Growth of Fiber-Optic Transmission Systems Using 100+nm Ultra-Wideband Semiconductor Optical Amplifiers

We report on the use of semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs) to extend the optical bandwidth of next generation optical systems. After discussing the technological progress and the motivation for rekindling the interest in SOAs for line amplification, we point out that the nonlinear gain dynamics of SOA is not a limiting factor for employing SOA as line amplifier. We show that the passage to high wavelength division multiplexed (WDM) channel count tends to substantially reduce nonlinear impairments, both through numerical analysis and experimental investigations based on standard off the shelf SOA devices. We then present the characteristics of our novel ultrawideband SOA-based packaged devices exhibiting high gain over 100+nm optical bandwidth, high output saturation power and low noise figure. We finally review the recent demonstration of the first >100+Tb/s transmission based on such novel 100+ nm wide semiconductor optical amplifiers over 100 km distance.