Receiver sensitivity improvement for NRZ-OOK signal by optical parametric amplifier-assisted detection

Abstract

By using a fiber optical parametric amplifier, we demonstrate a novel pre-amplification scheme to improve receiver sensitivity for 10-Gb/s non-return-to-zero on-off keying (NRZ-OOK) format with dual-end superposition of signal and idler in the optical parametric amplifier (OPA). We achieve receiver sensitivity of −40.5 dBm at BER = 10−9. Compared to its single-end counterpart, the receiver sensitivity can be improved by 2 dB.