Noise Suppression of Spectrum-Sliced Incoherent Light Using Long Gain-Saturated Semiconductor Optical Amplifier.

We realized the enhanced suppression of beat noise of spectrum-sliced incoherent light using a long gain-saturated semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA). The noise suppression in the high-frequency region beyond 1 GHz is enhanced with increasing device length for a gain-saturated SOA. We demonstrated 5 Gb/s back-to-back data transmission of 0.6 nm spectrum-sliced incoherent light using a 900-µm-long saturated SOA. The bit error rate (BER) of 10-10 was obtained without an error floor.