Analysis and minimization of cross phase modulation in semiconductor optical amplifiers for multichannel WDM optical communication systems

Abstract

A theoretical model for crosstalk in multichannel wavelength division multiplexing communication systems due to cross phase saturation in semiconductor optical amplifier structure is developed. This theoretical model is used to analyze the impact of the cross phase noise on the performance of semiconductor optical amplifiers in saturation region for WDM communication system by using differential phase shift modulation format. It is shown that by increasing the carrier life time, width and thickness while reducing the confinement factor, differential gain and bias current in the SOA structure mitigates the cross talk due to cross phase saturation. The impact of penalty and cross phase noise imposed on multichannel WDM links have been investigated for different parameters of the SOA with the variation in transmission distance. With the slight increase in differential gain of 200.2 × 10-18 cm2 and confinement factor 0.41, the maximum transmission distance observed is 5220 km with good quality and nil power penalty for 10 × 40 Gb/s soliton RZ-DPSK WDM signals for the first time. © 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. © 2008 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.