Power penalty assessment in optically preamplified receivers with arbitrary optical filtering and signal-dependent noise dominance

The assessment of the power penalty of optically preamplified receivers with signal-dependent noise (SDN) dominance is often accomplished by neglecting the influence of the optical filtering of the amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) noise on the signal-ASE beat noise. In this paper, it is shown that the optical filtering of the ASE noise can have a strong impact on the signal-ASE beat noise and remarkably affect the power penalty, even for optical filter bandwidths five times wider than the signal bandwidth. A simple expression to analytically evaluate the power penalty due to optical filtering, which describes reasonably well the influence of the optical filter on the signal-ASE beat noise variance, is proposed. The accuracy of the new expression is investigated, in the case of assessment of optical filter detuning impact on receiver performance and the case of optical filter bandwidth optimization, and its predictions are satisfactory in comparison with rigorous estimates. Two new expressions of power penalty due to extinction ratio and to eye closure are also presented. It is shown that the power penalty due to eye closure depends on the extinction ratio and vice versa. Our results show also that the power penalty due to eye closure is remarkably dependent on the eye closure asymmetry.