Characteristics of AlGaAs Fabry-Perot cavity type laser amplifiers

Signal gain, saturation power, and noise bandwidth, which are important parameters determining preamplifier and linear repeater system performance [1], were measured for an AlGaAs Fabry-Perot cavity type laser amplifier. The unsaturated signal gain increases with the pumping level and a maximum signal gain as high as 27 dB is obtained near oscillation threshold. The saturation output power, at which the signal gain is decreased from the unsaturated value by 3 dB, is -6 to -8 dBm. The beat noise powers between signal and spontaneous emission components were measured. The error rate characteristics of an AlGaAs laser preamplifier and Si photodiode scheme were studied at a data rate of 100 Mbits/s. The experimental results on noise powers and error rate performance are in reasonable agreement with the theoretical analysis given in an accompanying paper [1].