High-gain, high-power 1550-nm polarization independent MQW optical amplifier

A practical 1550-nm polarization independent semiconductor optical amplifier configuration employing compressively strained quantum wells and a few commercially available optical components is reported. Crosstalk from counter propagating light, which may easily occur in such a configuration, has been sufficiently suppressed for practical use. For the entire configuration a net fiber-to-fiber gain of 17 dB, a 3-dB saturation output power of 13 dBm and a noise figure of 9 dB have been demonstrated. The polarization dependence was only 0.7 dB. The polarization independent 1550-nm semiconductor optical amplifier reported here is attractive when power consumption and compactness are of major concern and especially for applications involving nonlinear signal processing and switching.