Detailed theoretical investigation of the input power dynamic range for gain-clamped semiconductor optical amplifier gates at 10 Gb/s

A detailed theoretical investigation of the input power dynamic range for gain-clamped semiconductor optical amplifier (GC-SOA) gates at 10 Gb/s is presented. We show that although the gain is clamped, the dynamic changes of the carrier distribution in the GC-SOA causes pattern effects on a time scale given by the relaxation frequency of the GC-SOA. Combined with a higher noise figure compared to a conventional SOA, this results in a dynamic range only /spl sim/0.5 dB better than for an optimized SOA gate.