Effects of stray reflections on the performance of semiconductor laser amplifiers as in-line optical repeaters

Abstract

The effects of stray reflections from the ends of optical fibres on the gain and spontaneous emission of a semiconductor laser amplifier have been analysed. The transfer matrix method (TMM) has been applied to give efficient solutions to the problem. The theoretical results show that these stray reflections can seriously deteriorate the performance of a single amplifier and can degrade the overall performance of a system incorporating a cascaded chain of amplifiers as in-line repeaters.