Noise transfer characteristics in a semiconductor optical amplifier with application to wavelength conversion based on a delay interferometer

A theoretical model is presented to analyze the noise transfer characteristics in a semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) under the excitation of a noisy pump signal and a noise-free probe signal. An analytical expression is derived for the optical signal-to-noise ratio (OSNR) of the output probe signal from the SOA. The influence of the gain saturation of the SOA, and the pump and probe signal powers on the noise transfer characteristics is investigated. The noise transfer model is used to determine the output noise power of a delay interference wavelength converter. An analytical expression is obtained for the nonlinear phase change in the SOA, which determines the output power of the wavelength-converted signal. These results show that the noise transfer in the wavelength conversion can be suppressed by increasing the probe signal power, but that the improvement in the output signal OSNR relative to the input signal OSNR is accompanied by a reduction in the conversion efficiency. This fundamental tradeoff can be readily investigated during the design optimization process using the concise results derived in this paper.