Investigation of Noise Characteristics for SBS-Based Optical Spectrum Analysis

Stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) can be utilized as an active optical filter (AOF) for high-resolution, wide band optical spectrum analysis However, significant excess optical noise will be induced compared with other passive filters because SBS is an amplification process. In this paper, theoretical model of the noise sources is analyzed for practical SBS-based optical spectrum analyzers (OSAs) including amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) noise, Rayleigh backscattering (RB) noise and out-of-band (OB) noise. And a detailed investigation is carried out with simulation and experiment to reveal the characteristics of the noise sources.