Modelling the power budget of amplified optical networks for future aerospace applications

The demand for high-speed photonic networks on civil and military aircraft has rapidly increased, with the use of optical components and fibres allowing significant achievements in helping to reduce weight, power consumption and cost. The power budget of an amplified CWDM network employing splitters and a wavelength filter has been evaluated. It has been shown that on larger networks, with high sources of loss, an SOA can be employed to benefit the system performance. The positioning of the SOA is important, as greater system margins can be achieved using SOAs with higher gains further from the transmitter.