What are the market applications of SOA optical amplifiers?

What are the market applications of SOA optical amplifiers?

SOA semiconductor optical amplifier is a PN junction device using a strain quantum well structure. The external forward bias results in a particle population inversion, and the external light leads to stimulated radiation, resulting in optical signal amplification. Advantages: Supports high speed, high bandwidth, low power consumption, high gain, miniaturization, and easy integration. Disadvantages: cross-gain modulation and nonlinear interaction between different wavelength channels, polarization sensitivity, gain saturation. Compared with EDFA optical amplifiers (erbium-doped fiber amplifiers), some indexes of commercial devices are weaker than EDFA optical amplifiers, but SOA optical amplifiers still have characteristics that EDFA optical amplifiers cannot replace. If it can support O-band (1260-1360), E-band (1360-1460), L-band (1460-1530) amplification, and has the characteristics of low cost, small size and easy integration, in the new infrastructure era, SOA optical amplifiers will be in the access network and the edge of the MAN, as well as optical fiber sensing field to obtain large-scale applications.

Market application of SOA optical amplifier

With the improvement of the performance of SOA optical amplifier such as output optical power, small signal gain, gain polarization sensitivity and noise index, SOA amplifier will play an increasingly important role in all-optical network communication and sensor networks. In addition to SOA optical amplifiers that can meet the amplification of 1310 nm band, SOA amplifiers can completely replace EDFA amplifiers in some single-stage amplification fields of 1550 nm band.

1. Carrier optical transmission network

With the construction of 5G network, the bandwidth demand surges, and 100G (4*25G CWDM4/LWDM4) high-speed transmission is required at the edge of access network and metropolitan area network, and the transmission distance at the edge of county and township transmission, access network and metropolitan area network is usually 5km-40km. In the 5G base station forward transmission scenario, in some base stations that are far away, optical modular SOA device can be used to improve the optical power margin, and realize the low-light transformation of the 25G signal rate of the base station in the 1310 nm band and 1550 nm band. In the application of carrier network, the SOA amplifier can be integrated into the ROSA or TOSA of the optical amplifier module, or the independent SOA device or SOA optical module can be used for amplification.

2. Spectral amplification of network monitoring

At present, with the rapid development of data business, the demand for data streaming monitoring in the market is gradually increasing, which is usually in the core network node for spectral monitoring, the signal is usually weak, the need to use optical amplifier, and 100G business has a lot of 1310 wavelength, can only be amplified by SOA device. This is also the most widely used and mature application of SOA amplification at present.

3. DCI for data center interconnection

With the development of big data, the demand for high bandwidth interconnection between data centers is gradually increasing. For high-speed services, an SOA device can be used for optical signal relay amplification, increasing the link optical power margin and extending the transmission distance. SOA amplifiers can be applied to both 1310 band and 1550 band high-speed service optical signal amplification. This market typically uses stand-alone SOA semiconductor optical amplifiers (rack mounted devices).

4. Application of distributed fiber optic sensing and LiDAR system

SOA optical modules have excellent frequency response characteristics and high extinction ratio, and can be used as optical switches or modulators. With the continuous improvement of SOA technology, AOM modulators can be replaced in most scenarios of optical fiber sensing to obtain narrow pulse laser with high extinction ratio.

In recent years, with the rapid development of intelligent traffic autonomous driving and vehicle-road coordination, LiDAR has been widely used in both vehicle-side and roadside forces. Due to the miniaturization and high gain of SOA optical amplifier module, it can be applied in LiDAR to obtain narrow linewidth laser and improve high optical power, especially the optical chip Lidar of the next generation of local FMCW technology, which is a broader application field of future SOA optical amplifier.