Two cascaded SOAs used as intensity modulators for adaptively modulated optical OFDM signals in optical access networks

Detailed theoretical and numerical investigations of the transmission performance of adaptively modulated optical orthogonal frequency division multiplexed (AMOOFDM) signals are undertaken, for the first time, in optical amplification and chromatic dispersion (CD) compensation free single mode fiber (SMF) intensity-modulated and direct-detection (IMDD) systems using two cascaded semiconductor optical amplifiers in a counterpropagating configuration as an intensity modulator (TC-SOA-CC-IM). A theoretical model describing the characteristics of this configuration is developed. Extensive performance comparisons are also made between the TC-SOA-CC and the single SOA intensity modulators. It is shown that, the TC-SOA-CC reaches its strongly saturated region using a lower input optical power much faster than the single SOA resulting in significantly reduced effective carrier lifetime and thus wide TC-SOA-CC bandwidths. It is shown that at low input optical power, we can increase the signal line rate almost 115% which will be more than twice the transmission performance offered by single SOA. In addition, the TC-SOA-CC-IM is capable of supporting signal line rates higher than corresponding to the SOA-IM by using 10dB lower input optical powers. For long transmission distance, the TC-SOA-CC-IM has much stronger CD compensation capability compared to the SOA-IM. In addition the use of TC-SOA-CC-IM is more effective regarding the capability to benefit from the CD compensation for shorter distances starting at 60km SMF, whilst for the SOA-IM starting at 90km.