Optical 2R remodulator using feedforward control of semiconductor optical amplifier gain

A technique for optical pulse regeneration and reshaping using feedforward current injection in a semiconductor optical amplifier is reported. By matc hing the shape and phase of the injected current and the incoming optical p ulse, the optical amplifier gain is set to increase with the amplifier inpu t optical signal level, resulting in an enhanced extinction ratio for the o utput pulse. It has been experimentally demonstrated that a proper forward gain control improves the output extinction ratio by more than 5 dB for a s ystem where the optical amplifier gain dynamics limits the maximum pulse ra te to 500 Mbits/s. (C) 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.