Characterization of wideband semiconductor optical amplifier: numerical analysis and simulation

One of the important devices for developing optical networks is the semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA). SOAs are utilized in a wide range to accomplish different purposes. In this paper, a wideband steady-state model and the corresponding numerical solution are presented for a bulk InP-InGaAsP homogeneous buried ridge stripe SOA. We characterize its gain and noise figure response to the variation in the bias current and the power of input signal. Moreover, the impact of power of input signal, molar fraction of Arsenide, bias current, and temperature is investigated at the spatial distribution of carrier density on the active region of the wideband SOA. The numerical results are approved by a comparison with simulation results showing a fair agreement. The obtained results reveal that the gain reaches its maximum value of 24, 23 and 21.6 dB at an input bias current of 120, 100 and 80 mA, separately, at the power of input signal of − 40 dBm. While, the minimum achieved noise figure (NF) is 13, 12, 9 dB at the power of input signal of − 40, − 20 and − 10 dBm, respectively, at an input bias current of 150 mA.