Investigation of Power Efficiency Changes in DWDM Systems Replacing Erbium-Doped Amplifiers By Semiconductor Optical Amplifiers

Abstract To evaluate potential utilization of semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs) as a wideband amplification alternative to erbium doped fibre amplifiers (EDFAs) in dense wavelength division multiplexed (DWDM) coherent systems, the authors discuss changes in power consumption levels required for a single bit transmission. The research evaluates the power efficiency parameter for WDM transmission systems using both amplification schemes – EDFAs that utilise standard C-band and SOAs assuming 75 nm amplification spectral band. The power efficiency levels have been estimated for five transmission spans with maximal distance of 640 km. The standard 50 GHz channel spacing has been chosen for both system configurations to allocate 100 Gbps dual-polarization quadrature phase shift keying (DP-QPSK) optical signals. The simulation schemes are described along with the critical parameters, derived from the recent relevant studies that should be taken into account considering usage of SOAs as in-line amplifiers.