Multi-electrode quantum-dot semiconductor optical amplifier as an intensity modulator of signals in optical communication systems

In this paper, we are going to exhibit the system performance using the single, double and three-electrode quantum-dot semiconductor optical amplifier as an intensity modulator (3E-QD-SOA-IM) of the adaptively modulated optical orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (AMOOFDM) signals in the intensity-modulation direct-detection passive optical network (IMDD-PON) systems. Moreover, to compare the bit-rate versus transmission distance of the proposed fiber link model when using both configurations multi-electrode semiconductor optical amplifier intensity-modulator (ME-SOA-IM) and multi-electrode quantum-dot semiconductor optical amplifier intensity-modulator (ME-QD-SOA-IM), to study the improvement of the transmission capacity, distance reach and power efficiency when applying the proposed configurations for optical access networks for distances ranging from 20 km up to 120 km. The three-electrode configuration solved the nonlinearity of the two-electrode configuration and offered a considerably wider range of optimum operating conditions to achieve up to 35 Gbps. Furthermore, the 3E-QD-SOA-IM showed a better performance over the 3E-SOA-IM over all the 120 km, and a 5 Gbps enhancement in the bitrate with a 20 dB less optical input power at 20 km. © Published under licence by IOP Publishing Ltd.