Output Level Control of SOA Using On-Chip Heater for High Output Power Operation

A novel gain control scheme of semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs) using a heater-mounted SOA was investigated. In our proposal, a simple SOA gain control using an on-chip heater provides a high saturation output power over an entire gain control range of 10 dB. This scheme widely expands the usable power range in output level control of a 10 Gbps NRZ-OOK signal, compared to that of a conventional gain control operated by drive current. As a result, the heater-mounted SOA exhibited a large input power dynamic range (IPDR) of > 17 dB up to the output power of +8.0 dBm in level control operation.