Abstract
We conduct a thorough comparison of two basic notch filters employed to mitigate the pattern effect that manifests when semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs) serve linear amplification purposes. The filters are implemented using as the building architecture the optical delay interferometer (ODI) and the microring resonator (MRR). We formulate and follow a rational procedure, which involves identifying and applying the appropriate conditions for the filters’ spectral response slope related to the SOA pattern effect suppression mechanism. We thus extract the values of the free spectral range and detuning of each filter, which allow one to equivocally realize the pursued comparison. We define suitable performance metrics and obtain simulation results for each filter. The quantitative comparison reveals that most employed metrics are better with the MRR than with the ODI. Although the difference in performance is small, it is sufficient to justify considering also using the MRR for the intended purpose. Finally, we concisely discuss practical implementation issues of these notch filters and further make a qualitative comparison between them in terms of their inherent advantages and disadvantages. This discussion reveals that each scheme has distinct features that render it appropriate for supporting SOA direct signal amplification applications with a suppressed pattern effect.
Highlights
Optical amplifiers (OAs) are key elements for the development, implementation and evolution of fiber-based transportation, distribution and access networks [1,2]
Both microring resonator (MRR) and optical delay interferometer (ODI) restore the form of the pseudo-eye diagrams (PEDs), which has severely been degenerated into asymmetric sub-envelopes at the SOA output
This improvement is further quantified by the degree of eye opening (EOP) [68], which is higher for the MRR than for the ODI, i.e., 91% vs. 87%, respectively, for transmission in the same fiber length of 12 km
Summary
Optical amplifiers (OAs) are key elements for the development, implementation and evolution of fiber-based transportation, distribution and access networks [1,2]. We have applied the optical filtering technique for SOA pattern effect suppression by means of a platform comprised of different notch filters [15,28,29,30,31,32,33] Among these filters, we distinguish the optical delay interferometer (ODI) [30,31,32] and the microring resonator (MRR) [33], which share several common features, such as an all-optical and passive nature, simple structure, compatibility both with fiber medium and microelectronic fabrication processes, compact size, periodic and tunable transfer function and potential for integration and co-packaging with the SOA in a single module. This indicates that the MRR has the technological potential to contribute in equal terms with its ODI counterpart for resolving the complications provoked by the SOA pattern effect
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