An Efficient Semi-Analytical Method for Modeling of Traveling-Wave and Reflective SOAs

An efficient semi-analytical method is developed for fast and precise assessment of the steady-state gain characteristics of the semiconductor optical amplifiers. It relies on the analytical solution for the photon densities spatial distribution, starting with the rough estimation without the nonlinear gain suppression, and subsequent refinement of the results by inclusion of the suppression. Carrier density spatial distribution is approximated either by a constant, or a piecewise constant function. Compared with the simplified wideband numerical method, which excludes the photon density spectral dependence, the semi-analytical method requires considerably lower processing resources, and, depending on the model complexity, can be between one and two orders of magnitude faster, without significant sacrifice of the accuracy.